


Don't Let Me Down

by poplocknsonnet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-04-22 10:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14306478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poplocknsonnet/pseuds/poplocknsonnet
Summary: Lily Evans has a lot on her mind. Her friends are whispering behind her back about a lame operation, her Head Girl duties and her classwork conspire to soak up every last free minute she has, and it's looking possible that Frank Longbottom is the victim of some odd, accident-inducing curse. Or that he's just really clumsy.Among all this chaos, it's odd that what's occupying her mind is that the Head Boy who has been, for as long as she's been at Hogwarts, irritating, frustrating, infuriating - suddenly isn't.Updates alternate Fridays.





	1. Good Day Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that I originally started writing and posting to ff dot net when I was in high-school (and used a different tag). There are fairly substantial changes between that first “draft” of this story and the one that I am posting now, so I wouldn’t recommend going back and looking at that.
> 
> Thanks to my beta @starsailor :)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**Thursday, September 1st, 1977**

The sun rose lazily over the rooftops of Cokeworth, the warm light of the late summer dawn transforming the city from a dark drab grey into a slightly less dark, but frankly no less drab grey. This was normal.

The streets were more or less deserted save for the street cleaners that were taking advantage of the early hour to keep the city neat and orderly. This was also normal.

And in the bedroom on the second floor of 55 Ash Street, Lily Evans decided that it was time to cut her losses and wake up properly; now that the sun was up, her best efforts to fall back asleep seemed more futile than they had for the previous several hours. This was decidedly not normal.

Lily Evans was not someone that could be described as a “morning person,” unless that moniker was prefaced by “definitely not a.” She’d even made Alice cry once, when she’d dared to take Lily too early from her sleep. Today, however, found her awake at 6:05, an hour that she usually declared “too early for any decent human being to be conscious.” The reason that she was up so early was simple; today marked the date of her final return to Hogwarts and in light of such an occasion, Lily Evans could not sleep.

It felt a little like standing at the edge of the very high diving board at the pool that she’d played at years ago, as a primary schooler. Staring into the water below, she had been seized with the realization that some future version of her would have to jump, that she couldn’t turn back now that she’d climbed all the way up the ladder. It felt a little like that, only instead of having a high dive in her future, she had job applications, and Head Girl responsibilities and, most terrifying of all, the prospect of leaving Hogwarts for the last time.

Every dive begins with a step, and so, burdened with the inevitability of seventh year, Lily finally prepared for the day. Her eventual descent into the kitchen was met with far more cheer than she thought appropriate for the hour. “There’s my lovely daughter,” her father said from behind his newspaper, “Coffee’s on.”

“Thanks,” Lily said, gratefully.

David Evans did a double take. “Lily? I thought you were Petunia. Has something happened? Is there a fire? Are we all about to die?”

“He’ll be here all week, everyone,” she deadpanned to a non-existent audience.

“You are up early though,” David noted, folding up his paper and fixing her with a Dad look. “What’s up?”

Lily slumped into her chair. “I just can’t believe that this is all happening right now.”

“Yes, the stock market’s pretty upsetting to all of us these days.”

Lily groaned. It was too early in the morning for this. “It’s my last year at Hogwarts and it’ll be strange going back and not staying with my friends. I’m not sure what to expect. But the stock market is upsetting too, I suppose.”

“Oh right. The Head apartments.” David frowned. “I’m not sure how I feel about your living with an unknown boy, Lily. Can I write Professor Dumbledore, do you think, and lodge a complaint? Or at least ask him to make sure that the Head Boy is highly unattractive?”

“You’re really not that funny, Dad. And besides, I think I know who it’s going to be, and we’re just friends. Promise.”

David looked sceptical. “I’ve heard that before. Who do you think it is? Severus?”

Lily shook her head. “I doubt it. And besides, we’re not friends anymore. We had a big fight last year and it made me realize how awful he’d become.”

“Well, I’m sorry that that happened, but he was always a bit of a weird kid, wasn’t he?”

“Dad!”

David shrugged. “He was never very nice to Petunia, even back when the two of you got along. Your mother and I put up with him because we thought you needed a friend that understood better than we did the kinds of things you could do, but I can’t say that we were happy it was him.”

Lily was taken aback. “I didn’t know you felt that way about Sev.”

“You never asked,” David said cheerfully. “So who’s your preferred candidate, then?”

“It’s probably Remus,” Lily said, thankful for the change of subject. Her dad teased her, but he always knew when and how to draw back. “He was prefect, he’s dead smart. If it weren’t for his idiot friends, there’d be no question.”

“Why would his friends impact his chances?”

“He’s one of the Marauders,” she explained, “I’ve written about them, I must have. There was the Noodle Incident from a few years back?”

“Oh, right. They sound like a good time. And one of them keeps asking you out - James, was it? Your mother and I enjoyed those letters; you should invite him for dinner some time.”

Her parents must have cracked - perhaps the stress of raising two daughters had been too much, or maybe it was the surprise of finding out that one of them was a witch that had caused their judgment to decay so precipitously. Honestly. They liked Potter, but had never liked Sev? “What?”

“All the boys that Petunia brings home are so boring and stuffy, and it looks like this latest one is going to stick around. I was really hoping that you would bring home a boy that I could have fun bullying a little. Grilling him on his ‘intentions with my daughter’ and insinuating that I own a shotgun and all that.” David sighed dramatically. “You’re really denying me one of the promised joys of fatherhood.”

“I am not bringing Potter home,” Lily said hotly, “Especially not as a boyfriend. He’s an immature prat who takes pleasure in humiliating me in front of everyone.”

David’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t know you were being bullied at school. Should I actually write to Professor Dumbledore?”

Her dad’s sudden sobriety cooled Lily off, letting her choose her next words a little more carefully. “It’s not that bad, I guess. He just keeps asking me out and making an enormous spectacle out of it. It’s embarrassing to be put on the spot like that and he won’t take no for an answer. I’m not being bullied.”

“You don’t like him back?”

“He doesn’t really like me, he just likes the attention and making a big show out of things.”

David nodded knowingly. “I see. Coffee’s ready, by the way.”

As they sipped their coffee (black for Lily, three sugar cubes plus milk for David) conversation shifted to tamer topics: what courses she was taking, plans for the winter hols, whether or not Vernon actually needed tusks to be legally considered a walrus. And before she knew it, the morning had passed and she was at Platform 9 ¾, flanked by her parents. Petunia hadn't come out to wish her good luck. Lily wasn't surprised; after all, her sister hadn't joined her on the station once, but it still hurt to know that she’d become so far from the girl that she'd grown up laughing and playing with.  

“Bye mummy. Bye dad.” She gave her parents a smile, trying to reassure them that yes, their baby was going to be okay, that yes, she would be safe. She was going to school, not to war.

Still, leave it to parents to worry.

“Be safe, darling” choked out Elizabeth Evans. She was tearing up, finally letting the tears that had been threatening to fall for the last twenty minutes slip down her cheeks. “Write us as often as you can.”

Her dad, of course, had to throw the morning’s conversation into her face. He pulled his daughter in closer for a final hug and whispered into her ear. “Tell James that your mother and I are very excited to meet him.” He pulled away from her with a laugh, fending off the indignant swat that Lily aimed in his direction. “Only kidding dear. Just... Be careful.” His eyes were twinkling with mirth. “I know how boys are around the girls they fancy.”

Blushing furiously, Lily turned to stomp off into the waiting train. She made it in safely, dropping off her trunk and turning to head into the carriage, only to-

Oof.

She had turned straight into the chest of Remus Lupin. She brightened. Finally, someone tolerable. “Remus!”

“Lily” he returned, with a smile. “How's my favorite redhead?”

She looked around. “I dunno... Didn't Molly Prewett graduate last year?”

She laughed, dodging the kick he aimed at her shins. “I'm doing great, Remus.” She grinned. She'd kept her badge a secret during the summer; she'd wanted to tell him in person. She rummaged around in her purse, before pulling it out triumphantly. “Look! I made Head Girl!”

Remus didn't even register shock or surprise. His eyes crinkled into a familiar smile, pulling one of his unexplained scars tight across his cheek. “I thought you might have gotten that, Lily.”

Her smile widened. “So? Let's see yours then. This'll be brill, Remus.”

Remus’ smile only grew. It was threatening to overtake his entire face. “Oh, no, it's not me” Remus said with a chuckle.

“Really? But I thought- I didn't mean-”

He cut her off. “Don't worry about it. Really. I'm not upset about it at all. It just looks like Dumbledore has a sense of humor.”

Lily was about to open her mouth to protest, to ask what he meant, to ask who the Head Boy was, when her answer came in the form of a bespectacled, laughing, black-haired boy who bounded into the corridor.

“Evans! Fancy meeting you here.”

Potter. She sighed, and turned to face him, doing her best to put a polite smile. “Hello, Potter,” she said.

The boy tsked. “And here I thought you’d greet your co-Head with a little more enthusiasm, Evans.”

“Oh very funny,” Lily replied. “I assume you overheard Remus and I?”

James didn't say a word, he simply reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a shiny badge in scarlet and gold with the letters HB embossed on it.

Lily's eyes widened. Emotions flitted through her mind until she settled on betrayal. Yes, she decided. Betrayal seemed about right. She felt betrayed, like the position that she'd worked for had become cheapened by her partner, that the fact that Potter, of all people, could be Head Boy diminished her own accomplishments. “Y- you-”

He grinned. “Yeah, Remus had a point. Dumbledore does have a sense of humor.” He glanced at his watch. “We should probably get going, we have a meeting with the prefects in... two minutes. Best to make a good first impression.”

After saying goodbye to Remus who left in search of Sirius and Peter, the two made their way to the head of the train, opening the door to the first carriage where they found that, despite nominally being on time, they were the last to arrive. Twenty-two prefects all but filled the carriage, chatting with their housemates about their summer or Quidditch or what have you, but turned when Lily and James walked in.

“Erm,” said Priyanka, one of the Hufflepuff prefects, “What is he doing here? Not that I mind, I’m just-” she cut herself off, cheeks flushed.

“This is a prefect meeting, Evans, can’t bring your boyfriend just because you’re Head Girl,” one of the Slytherins - Horatio? Octavio? - sneered.

“He’s not my-” Lily began.

“We’re not-” James said.

“I wouldn’t-”

“I’ll have you know-”

“Wait, James, are you Head Boy?” Marlene McKinnon, the Gryffindor sixth-year prefect asked, cutting the pair off.

James mouth clicked shut and he nodded, holding up his badge.

The carriage erupted into noise.

* * *

 Once the furor over Potter’s appointment subsided, the meeting went quickly and smoothly. The prefects seemed more or less competent, and besides seeing Mulciber and Bellatrix Black there (it had somehow slipped her mind that Slytherins would have prefects too) there had been no real surprises. Potter had, for once, remained quiet, seemingly content to scowl back at the Slytherins and let Lily run the meeting. She'd given each house's prefects their passwords, assigned a rotation for castle patrol, and bade them all find their friends. The meeting had been pleasant enough that she found herself smiling as she watched the last of the prefects say goodbye and leave, even as she realized that she was now sitting in a Hogwarts Express carriage alone save for James Potter.

“I think that went well,” the boy volunteered as the door clicked shut.

“'Course you do,” she said with a laugh. “You didn't do anything.”

He grinned at her. “Sure I did. Kept Mulciber in line, didn't I? The great prat was too busy staring at me and muttering obscenities under his breath to try anything.”

She frowned. The two Slytherin prefects were notoriously blood-obsessed; she'd had altercations with both of them in the past over her own Muggle heritage. The idea of working with them, the idea that they had power unnerved her.

Either James was more perceptive than he seemed or she was less subtle than she thought she was, because he turned to her and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Don't worry about it. They won't try anything stupid just because they're prefects. If anything, it's easier now for us to keep an eye on them.”

On any other day, she would have jerked her body away from his hand, pulling her shoulder out of his grasp, but for some reason, today she really didn't mind. It was comforting, and besides, this was the longest they'd spent in each other's presence without a fight or a proposal, really. It was almost nice – this was a side of Potter that she hadn't seen before, one that almost seemed to be a person instead of a hormonal troublemaker. Pleasant, mature, something of a laugh.

“Thanks Potter,” she said, more sincerely than she’d meant to. Suddenly a little flustered, she decided she had to leave. “Well, I’ll see you around, I’m going to go find my friends bef-”

She had only just stood up and turned to leave the carriage when her efforts to escape were abruptly cut off by a firm squeeze on her rear. With a yelp, she turned and pushed James to the floor before stepping backwards, hands outstretched in defense.

Eyes wide, James began to sputter, “Wait, Evans, that wasn’t what it looked like, I-”

“Oh save it,” Lily said disdainfully, “I knew you were the same idiot as before.” And with that, she stormed out of the carriage, too irritated with the boy who was still in a heap on the floor, to apologize when she bumped into Peter Pettigrew and the rest of the Marauders.

The trio of boys shared an exasperated Look. It was Remus who finally pushed the door to the carriage open and poked his head inside. “Really, James? You were setting a record there, thirty-six minutes. Couldn’t have held out for the round forty?”

Sirius pushed the blonde boy inside before stepping in himself and closing the door behind Peter. “What did you do this time, mate? Couldn’t hold back from reciting that-” he shuddered dramatically, “-poem that you wrote her last spring?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” James said, his voice sour, “I think Mulciber jinxed my shoelaces together during the meeting; as soon as I tried to get up, I fell right into her. And I’ll thank you to not make fun of my creative endeavours.”

Sirius’ face darkened. “We did see him coming down the corridor, didn’t we? Smug face that he had on, I should have known he’d done something. What do you think boys, fancy seeing if Mulciber’s as handy with the Giant Squid’s tentacles as he is Prongs’ shoelaces?”

James shook his head. “Just leave it. It’s not worth it.”

The shocked silence in the carriage was nearly palpable.

“Are you sure?” Remus asked eventually, “It is against the rules to attack another student, and this certainly counts.”

James snorted. “As if we haven’t done far worse to him before. I mean it, it’s not worth it.”

Sirius shook his head. “Cor, but this new you is boring.”

“Yes,” James said sadly, inclining his head, “Maturity is a heavy cross to bear.”

“Yeah, and you’re the only one bloody getting anything out if it,” Sirius grumbled, but he and the rest of the Marauders joined James in a moment of contemplative silence without further complaint.

“What I still don’t understand,” Sirius said eventually, “Is why she got so angry because you tripped. Does clumsiness bother her that much? Because if so, I feel like she’d have offed Peter years ago.”

“I, uh, may have tried to stop myself from falling by grabbing onto her,” James admitted.

“What, you mean you pulled her hair? I could see how that’d make her mad,” Peter said.

“Er, no,” James said weakly, “I-” He trailed off, making vague grabbing motions towards James’ behind.

Sirius, James, and Remus began to laugh, partially at how forlorn James looked as he mimed groping James, but mostly at the absurdity of James’ situation.

“This is the worst,” James complained, “She thinks I’m some perverted creep, and you lot think that’s funny? I’m the victim here.”

“Maturity’s working wonders,” Remus gasped out, “thirty-six minutes and you’ve already made second base!”

And with that, three Marauders collapsed into helpless laughter as James, terribly unamused, wondered what he’d done wrong in a past life to have such awful, awful friends.

* * *

Meanwhile, Lily was seeking solace in her friends' compartment. She threw the carriage door open violently enough to awaken Alice and to thoroughly startle Mary. Julia turned happily, not at all surprised by Lily's sudden entrance. But then, not much really surprised Julia.

Alice removed her head from Mary's lap with a start, the latter wincing at the sudden return of blood flow to her limb. “Wha' happened?” she asked blearily. “Someone fall off the train?”

Mary narrowed her eyes at her friend. “In all of history, have you ever heard of someone falling off the Hogwarts Express, Al?”

Alice shrugged, her grey eyes totally innocent. “Dunno. First time for everything, I suppose.”

Mary sighed. “Go back to sleep, Al. You make more sense when you're sleep-talking.”

Alice seemed to take this at face value, returning her head to its position in Mary's lap. “'f you say so. Night everyone. Night Lily.”

Lily smiled in return and took the seat opposite the pair. Mary began running her fingers carefully through her best friend's short brown hair before narrowing her eyes at the redhead. “So, Lils. What's got you in such a snit?”

She scowled. “Dumbledore made a mistake. The Head Boy is a disaster.”

Julia, a rather tall Asian girl with a face set in a permanent goofy smile piped up. “Oh, you found out it was James, then?”

Lily stopped short, turning to look at the girl sitting next to her. “You knew? Why didn't you tell me, instead of letting him spring it on me like that?”

Julia's smile faltered at her friend's irritation. “My daddy is friends with Mr. Potter” she responded. “He and his wife came over for dinner last night, so I only learned yesterday.”

Oh. Well, that made sense. Lily sighed. “I'm sorry for getting angry, Julia. He's just still a prat is all. It’s not such a big deal, I guess I just spent so long assuming that it would be Remus that it was more jarring than it should have been.” A sudden realization dawned on her – in her frustration with the selection of the Head Boy, she'd forgotten entirely that the two of them would be co-habitating. “Oh Merlin, I have to live with him. I take it back, this is going to be unbearable.”

Mary looked at her steadily for a few seconds, before asking “Not to... change the subject or anything, but don't the Heads usually patrol the train? I just remember last year, having that slimy git Macnair leering his way up and down the corridor.”

The world was out to get her for something she’d done, she was sure of it. “Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Ugh. I'll go find Potter and tell him to quit slacking off and we'll start patrols.”

Once the door had clicked shut behind the vanishing Head Girl, Mary turned to the girl across from her. “You didn't hear about that last night. You owled me about it a week ago, and told me not to tell Lils about it. What was that about? I thought you made it a point to never lie.”

Julia smiled happily. “Yes, but this is for a good cause, and you know how I feel about those.”

“Explain?” Mary asked, confusion coloring her face.

“James being Head Boy isn't all I learned at dinner that night.”

Mary perked up, leaning forward as much as she could without disturbing the girl fast asleep in her lap. “Oh?”

* * *

Potter was going to give her whiplash at this point, he really was. She'd run into him about twenty seconds after leaving her carriage to find him already patrolling the train. She had barely opened her mouth to warn him off of trying to grope her again when he cut her off with - of all things - an apology.

“Evans, I’m so sorry for what happened earlier, but it wasn’t my fault, I swear on my cat’s life.”

Lily blinked, caught off-guard by his eagerness to apologize. “You have a cat?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point. Somebody jinxed my shoelaces together and when I tried to get up, I tripped. Please, please believe me.”

It wasn’t the best explanation ever. In fact, it was pretty ridiculous as they go, but he looked so sincere and his apology so genuine. And it was probably best if they could start the school year on at least civil terms. “On your cat’s life, you say?”

He nodded furiously. “Yes. Look, I couldn’t even get the knot out afterwards; I had to cut them apart.” He pointed to his feet. Indeed, there was a nasty snarl hanging off of one shoelace, the end frayed where it had been severed.

Lily groaned. “It was probably Mulciber, wasn’t it? He was staring at you and muttering the whole time. Figures he’d be pants at nonverbals.”

“Yes! Exactly what I was thinking!”

Lily smirked. “So much for keeping him in line, hmm?”

“Oy, I’ll have you know I can be quite intimidating when I want to be. I was just trying to be on my best behavior,” James said primly.

With that, the pair began to walk the corridors, ensuring that their fellow students had a smooth ride back to school. James’ uncharacteristic behavior continued as they patrolled. He was behaving, no, weirder than that - he was acting like an actual, responsible authority figure. Of course, her first instinct had been suspicion. She'd tried asking him what he was up to, what prank he was pulling, even if it was Remus using Polyjuice Potion in an attempt to win some sort of affection for James from her, but he'd just laughed it all off, and continued to patrol with surprising earnestness, making sure that First years knew when they had to change into their robes and telling off a pair of especially rowdy Ravenclaws.

He was seriously confusing her – it was hard to match up any mental images of the immature prankster that she'd dealt with the six years previous with the boy next to her telling off a couple of third years for playing Exploding Snap in an enclosed space.

The pair continued their patrols with no incidents other than a pair of fourth years who had tried to smuggle a pair of doxies in an owl cage into the school, and a nasty pang in Lily's chest when she saw Severus sitting with Avery and Mulciber, heads bent over, clearly discussing something vile. Still, as Potter reminded her, “Talking isn't really against the rules, Evans,” though he did throw a withering glare at the back of Mulciber’s head.

All in all, it was a surprisingly pleasant couple of hours later that the train screeched to a halt. Already changed into their robes, the two Heads directed the first years to Hagrid, and the rest of the students to the carriages that would take them to the castle. Lily hastened to join her friends, hopping in and plopping herself down next to Julia.

Mary smirked at the new arrival. “So? How were your rounds, Ms. Head?”

“Pretty nice, actually. Potter seems to have mellowed, or else he's trying something. Either way, it's a nice change of pace, but I'm not going to look into it too much. Still, if he's going to make an effort to get along, I can too.”

“Lily, as much as we all love you, nobody believes that you're capable of getting along with Potter, no matter how much he’s ‘mellowed’ since the prefect meeting,” Mary noted drily.

Lily responded as maturely as she knew how (by sticking out her tongue) and the topic of the Head Boy was dropped. Alice quickly filled the silence with enough conversation for all four of them, chattering happily about her summer trip to Venice and all the dashing Italian boys she'd met.

“Alice,” Mary complained as they left the carriage, heading through the great double doors of the Entrance Hall. “Don't you ever get tired of talking? You're either talking or asleep. It's a wonder you're able to get any boys interested in you at all.”

Alice grinned cheekily at her best friend. “You're just jealous, Mare-Bear. Don't worry, one day you'll find a guy who's interested in the silent, surly type, and you'll go off and have cranky, mute little children together.” She laughed, linked a scowling Mary's arm in hers, and marched into the Great Hall with a smiling Lily and Julia close behind.

Surprisingly, the Marauders didn't try anything too outrageous during the Welcome Feast that year. While years previous had been marked by sudden hailstorms, floods of expanding gravy, and the release of a pack of nifflers, to name a few of the more memorable events, this year was unsettlingly calm. Lily found herself on edge throughout the meal, whipping her head around at any sudden noise, and jumping when the food in front of her disappeared and turned into dessert. She looked around at her schoolmates and found that she wasn't the only one perturbed by the uncharacteristic calm of the meal. Edgar Bones, a fifth year Hufflepuff, looked like he'd been thoroughly doused in EverItching Solution, and most of Slytherin House looked about ready to be sick with anticipation of something horrid.

Still, the meal ended and nothing had exploded, expanded, disappeared, or mysteriously gained sentience, so Lily decided that her first meal as Head Girl was a rather unprecedented success. She made sure that each house's prefects had each of their first-years accounted for, and was about to head to the Gryffindor Tower when she remembered that not only was she not staying with her house-mates that year, but she also didn't really know exactly where it was that she was staying.

She swore.

Alice frowned at her. “Lily! There are children around.”

Lily looked around distractedly – the first years had left, but the second and third years were awfully small. She sighed. “Sorry, I just... It just sort of sunk in that I'm not living in the dorm with you guys anymore.”

Mary snorted. “You don't see us complaining... Now James is the one who has to deal with waking you up. We should send him flowers. And maybe reserve him a bed in the Hospital Wing.”

Lily just glared at the blonde before marching off in search of James.

The three seventh year Gryffindor girls looked at the Head Girl's receding figure. “How long d'you give them?” asked Mary.

Julia frowned. “What am I giving them?”

Mary rolled her eyes. “I mean, how long do you think it'll take for our plan to work?”

“Oh!” Julia brightened. “Um. Three months? I bet we're going to be really good at it.”

Alice frowned and looked between her two friends. “I'm missing something, right?”

Mary just grinned, rubbing her hand affectionately over the shorter girl's head. “Don't worry about it Alice. Just something we discussed while you were asleep.”

Alice pouted. She hated being left out of a good secret.

* * *

 Lily found the Head Boy with the rest of his Marauders, lagging behind the crowd heading to the dormitories. She marched over, calling out “Potter!” as she did.

For some reason, at the mention of one of their names, the entire group felt the need to turn around. Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Hey Prongs! Looks like it worked, she's got the hots for you already!”

She flushed at the statement and stepped forward, ready to lambast the boy for his words, but Remus beat her to it, swatting Sirius in the back of the head. “Stuff it.”

Was it her imagination, or did James shoot a nasty look at Sirius, before turning to her? Whatever. “What's up, Evans?” he asked.

She frowned, not quite sure how to word her question in the presence of his friends. “I just- Ugh. D'you know where our dorm is?”

He pulled a slip of parchment out of the inside pocket of his robes. “Yeah, I asked Dumbledore right after the Feast ended.” He unfolded the note, and showed it to her. “Says it's on the floor above the library, behind a statue of Grendel the Really Old.”

Peter scratched his head. “We know where that is, don't we? We hid in a broom closet near there from Filch that one time in third year?”

Sirius grinned. “Right, mate, we'd... What was it... Charmed the dungeons pink, was it?”

Peter cut in. “Nah, that was the Halloween prank. We were hiding from Filch because we transfigured Mrs. Norris into a doormat, and he didn't realize until he'd rubbed his boots on her twice, remember?”

Lily rolled her eyes. Typical. You could count on the Marauders to know where pretty much anything or anyone in the castle was, but they had the most childish reasons for knowing what they did. “So, James. You remember this too?”

James looked uncomfortable. “Um. Well. Yes. Yes I do.”

“Of course you do. Well?”

He balked. “Well what?”

“Are you going to show me the way?”

James glared at his “friends”. Were they really laughing at this? “Yeah, absolutely Evans. Just head up the north staircase, and I'll catch up in a mo’.”

Lily frowned at the still laughing Marauders before accepting James's offer and leaving the Great Hall. The four boys watched her go, until James angrily snapped “Really? It's hard enough trying to act responsible around her without all of you lot going and reminding her that we're really not.”

Sirius snickered. “We? Prongsy, Moons, Wormy, and I are paragons of maturity.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah. Moony already acts like an old man.”

“It's just so difficult to misbehave around him that we might as well give up.”

“He's such a killjoy.”

“We might as well start calling him Professor Lupin at this point, insufferable do-gooder that he is.”

Judging by the look on his face, Remus was anything but amused. “James” he said drily. “Seeing as how I am regrettably not a Professor yet, would you be so kind as to give these two detention for general idiocy?”

“Aah, Prongsy would never do that to his best mates” vowed Sirius. “We mean far too much to him to waste away in detention.”

James' expression was even less agreeable than Remus'. “Boys,” he managed, forcing the words out around a clenched jaw. “This is my last year here. I have one more year to win Evans over. Don't fuck this up for me. Okay?” He shot his friends a filthy look and left, jogging to catch up with the Head Girl.

Sirius turned to Peter and raised an eyebrow. “If he's like this now, how whipped will he be, d'you reckon, if she actually decides to give him a chance?”

Peter gazed at James' back with a mournful expression. “It'd be worse than that time Filch caught us spiking the faculty lounge's pumpkin juice.”

Sirius winced. “Mate, I think I still have scars from that. Remind me why we got caught for that one?”

Peter snorted. “Prongs saw a note that Evans had written McGonagall about our Halloween prank that year, and was convinced that the fact that she'd used his name meant that she was secretly in love with him. He had to stay to read the whole thing, didn't he?”

“... Prongs is a right git, isn't he?”

“Yeah, but imagine how bad he'll be if they don't end up together.”

“Point taken, Wormy, point taken.”

Remus just sighed and shook his head. “You two are impossible. Remind me why we're friends again?”

Sirius grinned. “You're secretly madly in love with us?”

Remus flushed.“Oh you wish. Grow up, you stupid tosser.” He too turned and stalked off, muttering darkly as he made his way towards Gryffindor tower.

Peter and Sirius watched as he stormed off. “We're really getting good at this whole “drive people off” business, aren't we, Padfoot?”

“It's good practice, Wormy” said Sirius sagely. “With as many admirers as I've got, it takes real finesse to keep them at arm’s length, sometimes.”

Peter looked at the other boy for a second, before thoughtfully admitting, “You know, maybe they've got a point. You really don't take anything seriously at all, do you?”

Sirius made a noise that, coming from anyone else, would be called a giggle. This was Sirius Black though, and he was _far_ too manly for anything less than a chuckle, so Sirius chuckled. “It's all part of my charm, Wormy. All part of the charm.”

* * *

 “Evans! Hey! Evans!” She'd moved quickly, or James had been talking longer than he'd expected to. Either way, she'd made it a lot further than he'd anticipated, and he'd ended up having to run to catch up to her. “I- Look, I'm sorry that my friends are a bunch of gits, okay? And I'm sorry again for the train. So so sorry.”

She turned around and shrugged. “Eh. I overreacted, I guess. I'm sorry as well. I guess I should be used to it by now.”

He looked warily at the girl in front of him. “You're... You're sorry? Geez, Evans, I was expecting a lot more than that.”

Another shrug. “I mean, you apologized first. And I saw you making an effort to be less of a git just then, so it’s only fair that I do the same, right? I mean, we're living together. We're gonna have to learn to get along somehow.”

He must be dreaming or something, because really, this was not Lily Evans in front of him. “I... Don't get me wrong, Evans, that sounds great and all, but this is pretty sudden. Where's this coming from?”

She grinned. “I noticed that the Marauders didn't try to pull something big tonight. At first I thought maybe the lack of a prank was the prank, you know, make us all wary over nothing, but then I figured that that was too clever for you.”

By the way he was looking at her, a casual passerby might have expected Lily to have sprouted a third arm, or perhaps grown purple tentacles in place of hair. She swiped nervously at her cheek, uncomfortable under his eyes. “Do I have something on my face? What's wrong? Is it my hair?”

James just shook his head. “I just... Wow. You've hated me for so long, it's just such a quick turn-about. I'm a little spell-shocked.”

Lily laughed derisively. “Hated you? You give yourself far too much credit, Potter. If anything, you just irritated me. Hating you would have taken up too much of my spare time.” She grinned cheekily at him. “You weren't worth it.”

Honestly, if it wasn't for that grin she'd flashed him (the first smile of hers that she'd directed towards him in the six years that he'd known her, and yes, he was keeping track) he probably would have been heartbroken right there. “Well, give it time. I'll win you over soon enough.”

“Win me over to what? Hating you?”

“Y'know, I bet you could hate me a lot quicker if you started calling me James. Familiarize yourself with the enemy and all, yeah?”

“You are really bizarre, Potter.”

He just shrugged. “Well, you're putting up with me, so that's enough progress for one day, I guess. I'll get you to call me James tomorrow.”

She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Good luck with that.”

“Luck is for the weak” James scoffed. “Marauders make their own.”

“Oh really? I didn't think you lot paid attention in Potions nearly enough for that.”

The banter continued as the pair made their way to their new lodgings. Once the initial shock of a Lily Evans receptive to conversation had worn off, James found that she was surprisingly easy to talk to, even if her sense of humor was, perhaps, a little drier and more subtle than that of his fellow Marauders.

There was a moment of discomfort when the pair reached a statue of an ancient, wizened wizard and realized that neither of them knew the password. The two looked briefly at each other, about to ask if the other new the password, when the statue spoke. “The Head Boy and Girl, I presume?” he rasped, in a feeble voice. “Well then. Select a password, and I'll show you in.”

Lily looked at James. “Any suggestions, then?”

“Felix Felicis?” He shrugged. “You're right, all I know is the name.”

She almost laughed. “This is what you call making your own luck? Pathetic, Potter.” She turned, and addressed the statue. “Felix Felicis.”

The statue bowed slightly, wincing at the gesture and stepped aside, the wall behind it melting into a door. “Your rooms.”

“After you then, Lily,” James offered gallantly.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Be still, my heart” she laughed, pushing the door open and stepping inside.

* * *

 “Mare? Julia?” Alice asked as the three girls settled into their beds for the night. “What was all that in the Great Hall earlier on?”

Mary glanced at the third girl in the room. “Julia? It's your story.”

Julia grinned happily. Letting Alice in on their plans would make it so much more entertaining and Alice could help! She had all kinds of useful experiences. “Okay!” She paused, chewing on her lower lip as she tried to figure out where to begin. “Well,” she started, “My daddy moved back to Wizard London after momma left, and he met Mr. Potter at work. And they both liked their chips with mayonnaise, so they became friends, and now Mr. Potter comes over for dinner once a month, and sometimes he brings Mrs. Potter, but never James for some reason, and we never go over there, and I think it's because Daddy doesn't like that they have so many house elves.” Julia paused to take a breath. “And so he was over last week, and we were eating chicken, and then Mrs. Potter asked if I knew who Head Girl was, and so I said yes! It's my friend Lily! So she asked if that was Lily Evans, and I asked how she knew Lily, and she said that she didn't, and that confused me, because how did she know Lily's last name, so I asked her that. And she said that James talked about Lily all the time at home, and didn't know why Lily didn't like him back, and that he wrote her poetry but didn't send it, which I think is silly, because if you write somebody poetry, you obviously want them to know how you feel, so he should have sent it, but I didn't say that.”

Mary laughed. “Tell her the best part, Jules.”

Julia's smile widened. “Well, after we ate blueberry pie and Mr. Potter cleaned off the stain where he dropped pie on the tablecloth, they got up to leave, and as they were leaving, Mrs. Potter asked me if I could please point Lily in the right direction so that she could have a non-mopey son back, and Mr. Potter agreed, but said that it might be harder to keep James from messing things up than it would be to get Lily on the right track. And I didn't really know what they meant, so I asked Mrs. Potter why I couldn't just buy Lily a map or a compass, because that would be easier, and she looked confused, but my daddy just laughed and told me that he'd explain later.” Julia smiled happily, having completed her explanation of that night's events.

Alice looked confused, a rather common state for anyone who spoke to Julia for too long. Mary, however, was well-versed in Julia-logic, and was able to clarify. “Basically, the Potters want us to play match-maker for Lily and James.”

Alice's squealed in surprise, and her eyes crinkled with glee. She bounded over to Mary's bed, throwing the girl into a tight embrace. “This is going to be the best year ever!” she shrieked.

Mary grinned contentedly. “Yeah, Al, yeah it is.”

* * *

 In the Head's dormitory, things were surprisingly comfortable. Lily and James had arrived to find a set of rooms not that unlike those found in the Gryffindor common room. Their (admittedly smaller) common room was furnished with squashy armchairs and had a small fireplace set against the left wall. The back wall had two doors which lead to the two bedrooms, each of which had another door which opened into the joint bathroom. Lily despaired at the single shower while James turned slightly pink when he realized that they were sharing the facilities.

However, once the initial shock of their shared living space wore off, the two decided that all things considered, their situations could be worse. The dorm was spacious enough that they could ignore the other when necessary, but small enough that it felt rather homey. Both were, by nature, relatively neat and tidy, and as James pointed out, neither of them were Slytherins, so they had that going for them.

They reached several ground rules rather quickly, Lily insisting that the Marauders could _not_ use the dorm as a party-house, and James replying that rules, like formal-wear, were stifling, thank you very much. There was all the awkwardness that would be expected of two teenagers forced to live with a member of the opposite sex for the first time, but it wasn't insurmountable. Their interactions were pleasant enough that Head Boy and Head Girl bade each other good night feeling as excited about the coming school year as they had been upon waking.

Lily lay awake in bed for a period thinking of her responsibilities as Head Girl, her classes, her friends, and the looming threat of N.E.W.T.s and of career placement before eventually succumbing to sleep.

James lay awake even longer thinking of Lily.

* * *

This isn’t a love story - not exactly. This is a story about heartbreak, and about losing friends, and about how cruel children can be, intentionally or not, to those that they hate and to those that they love. This is a story about friends and enemies, and about choices between right and wrong. But most of all, this is a story about two promises that Lily Evans made to herself as that she did not keep.

This story will not have a happy ending.


	2. Eight Days a Week

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story will be updated every other Friday. I'm fairly certain (85%) that it will run the 19 chapters that I've laid out.
> 
> Thanks again to @starsailor for beta-ing!

******Friday, September 2nd, 1977**

Lily awoke characteristically grouchy. She woke up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, and from a quick glance at her clock, it was 7:15 AM. All in all, a dreadful start to a day.

It was only the fact that she had to go to breakfast to receive her schedule that got her out of bed, still yawning, and into the bathroom to get ready for her first day of classes. Scratching at the nape of her neck, she started to brush her teeth as she scowled at her reflection. She pulled helplessly at her hair, unruly as usual in the mornings, and wiped the sleep out of her eyes.

It wasn't until he walked in, wrapped in a towel in preparation for a shower, that she remembered that she had a dorm-mate.

“Oh” he stammered, his eyes blinking uncomfortably from behind glasses. (Who even wore glasses into the shower?) “Uh... Shit, I'm sorry about that, Evans; I didn't realize you'd be up so early. Mary always complained about how you were in the mornings, and so I figured that I'd-”

She rolled her eyes and cut him off with an outstretched hand. She was not in the mood to deal with this. She spat out her toothpaste, rinsing her mouth out quickly. “Oh lighten up, Potter. It's not like I haven't seen a guy without a shirt on before. Just go take your shower.”

Lily wasn't entirely sure, but she had a suspicion that James may have been blushing as he rushed into the shower, throwing the towel over the side of the door. Whatever. She washed her hair in the sink (stupid Potter. Stupid bathroom with only one shower) dried it with a quick charm, and dragged a brush through it as best she could. Satisfied with the results, she returned to her room to change. It was then that she realized that James Potter had seen her in her sleep clothes – an oversized white t-shirt and a pair of knickers. This was definitely not the best first-morning-of-class that she'd ever had.

“Great,” she muttered, “Just my luck that he wears his glasses into the shower, too.”

Her mood stayed (characteristically) sour as she dressed and as she stomped her way down to the Great Hall. She was scowling as she sat down between Alice and Julia and reached for a plate of waffles. “Good morning!” chirped Alice. “How's the new dorm? Are you going to show us around soon?”

Lily groaned. “It's... Well, actually, it's not that bad,” she allowed. “The rooms are pretty nice. Pretty similar to Gryffindor's rooms, actually.”

Julia carefully watched Lily shrug and turn to devour a waffle. “Lily, what happened?”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Julia, this is Lily. She's always a terror in the morning.”

“No, this is different.”

Lily scowled. How was it that Julia couldn't understand idioms, but could pick out the most subtle nuances of her behavior? “I'm fine. James just walked in on me in the bathroom this morning, and it kind of freaked me out is all.”

Mary snorted. “He what now?” (“See?” said Julia, happy that she'd been right.)

“I mean, I was just brushing my teeth, but I hadn't changed or anything, so he saw me in my knickers.”

Alice giggled. “Did he stare?”

No!” Lily snapped. She softened. “Actually, come to think of it, he really didn't. He just kind of tried to apologize. I thought at first that he was apologizing because he didn't have any clothes on, but looking back on it, it was probably because _I_ didn't have any clothes on.”

“Oh, he was naked too, then?” Mary asked innocently.

“No,” Lily groaned, “He was in a towel; he was getting ready to shower.” She loved Mary dearly, but really, she was going to have to kill the blonde at this rate.

“Well,” Julia broke in, “Since he apologized, and since you saw him mostly naked too, doesn't that make you two even?” She grinned happily at her solution. “It's all fair this way! Except you should apologize too, Lily.”

Lily frowned. “Apologize? For what? I mean, I guess I was a little rude, but it's the morning, you can't expect someone to be polite that early in the morning.”

“He was,” Mary noted.

“Ugh. Fine. I'll apologize to him when I see him. Happy?” Lily shoved another entire quarter of a waffle into her mouth, chewing noisily.

Julia smiled contentedly, and Alice grinned. “Attractive,” commented Mary. “Really. No wonder the guys love you.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “You can have 'em, Mary. I'm gonna go get my schedule now. You all have yours already?”

Three heads nodded simultaneously as Lily stood up and started towards McGonagall's table.

Julia turned to Alice, a smile plastered on her face. “They've already seen each other mostly naked!” she crowed. “And Lily's not even killing him! This'll be easier than we thought.”

Mary chuckled. “Jules, hate to break it to you, but 'not even killing him' isn't exactly a marriage proposal.”

“Not yet,” vowed Julia. “But leave it to Operation Lames!”

Alice frowned. “Julia, I thought we agreed that “Jily” was a better name.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “I just remember voting for Pevans.”

* * *

Lily was, overall, pleased with her schedule. Double Potions first period on Friday was a good way to start the term. She'd made it into every N.E.W.T. that she'd signed up for, which came as no surprise, not with the results she'd obtained on her O.W.Ls. Looking around, schedule in hand, she realized that first period was about due to start, so she quickly headed back to the Gryffindor table, picked up her bag. She trotted off towards the dungeons looking for her friends – they'd all done well on their O.W.L., well enough that Slughorn would let them in to N.E.W.T. Potions if they'd signed up for it.

She was about halfway to the dungeons when she heard a yelp from behind her. She spun around to see a Second Year Slytherin holding a torn bookbag. Her things were an ink-splattered mess on the floor and she looked on the verge of tears. A couple of friends milled around her, trying to help, but Lily could see that they didn't know the charms they'd need to repair the bag and clean the books. She was going to be late, but it was her job to help. Besides, this was Slughorn; she seriously doubted that the Potions Master would dock her points or even reprimand her if she walked in late.

She marched over and waved the girls friends off to class, before shuffling the girl's parchments and books into as neat of a pile as she could. She wiped her ink-stained fingers on her robes and pulled out her wand, muttering “ _tergeo,_ ” and passing it over the mess. The smears and stains slowly faded, causing their owner to let out a relieved whimper. “Th- Thank you,” the girl said, “I- I don't know what happened. I was just, just walking, and then the bag ripped, and then the ink was everywhere, and-”

“Shhhh,” soothed Lily, “Don't worry about it, accidents happen. Are you going to be able to get to class on time?”

The girl looked up at her with wide eyes. “Y- You're Lily Evans! You're Head Girl! And you're helping me!”

Lily smiled. “Yes. Yes I am. And shouldn't I? That's my job, isn't it? What's your name?”

“Me- Melanie Greengrass,” the girl answered.

“Well, Melanie, are you going to be late to class?” Lily asked again.

“N-no,” Melanie replied, her long blonde hair waving as she shook her head, “I don’t have class now. I- I was just heading up to the library to preview for Transfiguration.”

Lily chuckled. “Reminds me of how I was in Second Year. Don't worry, you'll start to hate your classes like a normal student soon enough.” She winked at the smaller girl, before pointing her wand at the torn bag, and whispering “ _reparo._ ” The cloth re-stitched itself until all evidence of the damage was erased.

“Thank you!” Melanie beamed. “You're being so nice to me. Most people don't really stop to help Slytherins. Not even other Slytherins,” she admitted unhappily.

Lily rolled her eyes, thinking of the Marauders and their vendetta against the House. “Well, I try to not be most people. If you ever need anything, just let me know, okay?” She grinned, before adding, “I have to get to class now though. Slughorn likes me, but I don't want to push it, do I?”

Melanie squeaked. “Oh. Okay. Sorry for holding you up.”

Lily laughed. “Really, don't worry about it. I don't think he's physically capable of docking me points. I'll see you around, Melanie.”

The smaller girl beamed as she bounced up the stairs to the library. Lily, shaking her head and chuckling to herself at the girl's exuberance, headed down towards the dungeons.

When she finally reached the classroom, there was only one table left. She apologized quickly to a beaming Slughorn, explaining why she was late, and he waved her off jovially, assuring her that the class couldn't really start without his “brightest student”. Blushing at the public (but not unwarranted, unless you counted Severus, and really, she couldn't find it in her to count Severus anymore) praise, she headed to the empty seat at the back of the room, noting that while Alice and Mary were sitting together, Julia was nowhere to be found. The two girls shot her a quizzical look, to which she responded with a muttered “tell you later”, as she made her way to her seat.

It was about five minutes into Slughorn's explanation of just how gruelingly difficult the year in Potions would be that James Potter entered the classroom. The room quieted when he walked in, possibly owing to the fact that it was James Potter, and possibly owing to the fact that he was sopping wet. He shook a wet lock of hair out of his face, grunted out a “Sorry I'm late” to a bemused Slughorn, and glanced around the room for a seat, his eyes falling on the only empty one in the room.

Lily leaned over as James sat down next to her. “What happened to you?” she whispered.

The soaked boy raised an eyebrow as he looked her over. “What happened to me? What happened to you?”

“Me?” Lily looked at him quizzically.

“Yeah, hold on a mo',” James reached into his pocket and pulled out his wand. Holding it under the table, he muttered, “ _muffliato_ ” and stashed his wand away again. “You're covered in ink or something.”

“I am?” Lily reached into her potions kit and retrieved her silver knife. She held it up and used its blade to examine her reflection. It was true, her hair had a streak of black ink in it where she must have tugged at a lock of hair, and her face had several smears. She looked down and saw that her robes too were fairly sticky, and that there was a small patch of black on her red and gold Gryffindor tie.

“Oh. Some Second Year had a burst bookbag,” she explained, “I helped her clean up. You?”

“Water fountain exploded next to me,” replied James. “Fourth Year Hufflepuff. Screamed like a banshee when it blew.” He took in her disapproving glare for a second before hastening to add, “I didn't do it! I fixed the thing up. I swear it wasn't me.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Right. Well, Slughorn's still not actually teaching us anything important right now, so I guess it's as good a time as any to apologize for this morning.”

“This... This morning?”

Lily flushed. “Yeah. Um.” Her blush deepened. “Merlin, I'm not sure what to apologize for, but I told Julia I would, so... I guess I'm sorry for seeing you in a towel? And being rude about the whole thing?”

James looked utterly bewildered. “Evans, you are the most confusing person I've ever met.”

“How d'you figure? I'll take that as a compliment, by the way.”

“This morning I thought you were going to hex my bits off for seeing your knickers, but you just made a joke and now you're apologizing.”

Her face was probably indistinguishable from her hair at this point. “Well,” she clarified, “I'm not saying hexing didn't cross my mind, but you didn't do anything wrong and you apologized, so it really wouldn't have been fair, would it have?”

He shrugged. “Hey, I'm not complaining. I rather like my bits where they are.”

They sat in silence for a while, listening to Slughorn explain exactly _how_ difficult it would be to achieve high marks on the essays this year, something about “stringent policies regarding means of citation” and “high expectations of your academic ability” which the pair decided to simply tune out. It was after a few minutes of this that Lily broke the silence. “So. You like what you see then?”

James ears turned bright red, and he started to sputter. He wasn't really forming coherent words, rather, he was trying to disavow any knowledge of just what Lily Evans looked like in a t-shirt and knickers without insulting her looks, and failing miserably. It wasn't until he looked over to see her biting her lip to keep from laughing that he realized that she was making fun of him.

“Oh shut up,” he grumbled, ears still flaming.

“Really though,” Lily snickered, “I take it by your lack of a proper answer that you think I'm pretty fit.”

James rolled his eyes. “Now, I wouldn't go that far, Evans. It's like when someone falls off their broom. You don't want to watch but you can't just tear your eyes away, can you?”

“Ouch,” she pouted playfully, “Keep complimenting me like that, and I'll think you fancy me or something.”

James paused for a second, his expression inscrutable, before snorting. “Wouldn't want that, would we? Maybe I ought to collect some more evidence before I pass judgement then.”

“Oh, keep dreaming Potter,” Lily huffed as she turned back to watch Slughorn's lecture. But try as she might, she couldn’t keep herself from smiling as she diligently took notes on the proper method for recording alterations to potion recipes.

Class ended without any more interaction between the pair. Lily began to pack up her things, but her desk-mate wasn’t moving. Lily had to smile when she glanced at James’ parchment - he had started out by taking notes, but had apparently gotten bored, as the rest of the sheet was covered in a rather detailed depiction of the four Marauders in full pirate regalia, complete with an eye-patch-bearing cat perched on Captain Potter’s shoulder. She tapped him on the corner, snickering when he jumped. “Class is over, Potter, so you can stop being such a bookworm and get to lunch.”

He grinned sheepishly. “Sorry Evans, forgot you were there. You startled me.”

* * *

Mary and Alice were waiting for Lily by the time she'd made her way out of the classroom. “What happened, Lils?” asked Alice. “It's not like you to be late to class. And you're all... You're all black.” Alice poked Lily's side gingerly. “Is that ink?”

Lily sighed. “It is. Some Second Year's bag burst, and no one else seemed like they were going to stick around on the first day of class to help out. Hold on a sec.” She pulled out her wand and carefully cleaned off her robes and face before shrugging. “Anyway, no harm no foul, I got her stuff sorted, Slughorn likes me too much to dock points for lateness, and besides, I could have cut class today and not missed anything important.”

The three girls had left the dungeons and were turning a corner on the second floor when they were joined by Julia, who quickly fell in step with her friends. “Hi!” the tall girl chirped. “How was Potions?”

“You didn't miss anything,” confided Lily, “Slughorn was just being dramatic as usual, trying to wind up anybody he could with talk about N.E.W.T.s.”

“Where does he put the key?” Julia wondered out loud, “Because usually it goes in the back, but I've seen some where the key goes into the top of the head.” Julia got on her tiptoes and peered at the top of Lily's skull. “You don't have a hole in your head, Lily.”

Lily's brow furrowed in confusion, but the girl chose to disregard Julia's confusing spiel. “So what happened to you?” she asked instead, “Did you drop Potions or did you just feel like skiving off?”

Julia's face was inscrutable. “No, I'm signed up for Potions, it's just- I- I had other things to do” she said quietly. “I...” She turned abruptly on her heel and walked off in the opposite direction, leaving a bewildered trio behind her.

“What... What was that about?” asked Lily, stopping to stare at the space that Julia had just previously occupied.

Alice turned to Mary and gave her wink. The blonde grinned in response, before poking Lily's side. “What?” Lily yelped.

“I'm hungry,” Mary said, “Julia's just being Julia. C'mon, I've missed Hogwarts lunches.”

Lily rolled her eyes, but acquiesced, starting off towards the Great Hall.

“Lils?” Alice asked, following closely behind the red head. “What were you and James talking about?”

“What?” replied Lily. “Just... I don't know, stuff? Why?”

“It's just...” Alice chewed her lip thoughtfully, trying to figure out how best to describe her curiosity. “It was the longest conversation that I've ever seen you two have. And Mary and I kept looking over, but you seemed too interested in what he had to say to notice that we were watching.” Alice shrugged. “So I just wanted to know what you were talking about.”

“Oh.” Lily turned her green eyes upwards as she thought. “Let's see... I asked him why he was wet, then he asked me why I had ink all over me, then I apologized for snapping at him this morning.”

She thought for another second. “Yeah, that's about it.”

“Okay” said Alice. She turned to Mary behind Lily's head and grinned. “So you two are getting along now?”

Lily shrugged. “I guess so? He's a pretty nice guy when he's not thinking about himself. And it's kind of funny the way he puts his foot in his mouth and then trips over it trying to apologize. As long as he doesn't go back to being a prat overnight, I think we can get along.”

“Oh brill,” said Mary, with relief evident in her voice. “It was such a pain being both of your friends what with your ignoring him and his being convinced you hated him.”

“I never hated him!” Lily protested. “He was an arrogant git, so it was easier to just ignore him than get into a shouting match every time he acted like a prat.”

“Whatever. As long as you two are getting along, I don't really care. It's just easier if all of my friends can at least be in the same room without glaring at each other.”

The three girls slowly made their way into the Great Hall, chatting as they did before settling down in their usual place at the Gryffindor table. Surprisingly, Julia was waiting for them. “Hello,” she said mournfully. “I was going to avoid you, so I went back to the dorm, but there was a letter for Lily on my bed and I decided that I was hungry, so I came down instead.” She looked at Lily. “I brought you your letter, so you can't ask me where I was this morning.”

Such demands weren't that strange, coming from Julia. She was usually exceedingly agreeable, but once she decided that something had to be her way, it was quite the task to convince her otherwise. “Fine by me Jules,” she agreed. “Let's see this letter, then, see if it's worth the price you're asking.”

Julia reached into her hand-embroidered bookbag and pulled out an envelope of heavy, creamy paper. Lily glanced quickly at the Black family crest that adorned the wax seal and grinned – she'd been waiting for this.

 _Dear Snake-Soul,_ it began.

 _Congratulations on Head Girl! Carrying on the legacy, I see. Not that you could ever live up to my standards, but it'll be a laugh to hear about you trying. I'm sorry I didn't respond earlier, but really, you deserve it. I've been so busy with_ not _being at Hogwarts! It was so strange knowing that all of you were on the train back without me._

_Important news - you remember Lucius, right? He graduated two years before me? Well, I started seeing him over the summer, and he's lovely. Kind, courteous, smart, cute, and, I mean, it's kind of a minor point, but he's also filthy rich. Not that that's important or anything. But I digress, we were talking about you and your life, not my boyfriend. (Boyfriend! I love saying that. Or writing it. Same thing. Boyfriend. Aaah. Bliss.)_

_Back to you though – how was your summer? Is Petunia still being jealous and impossible? I know how it feels to lose a sister, even if our situations aren't really the same. I'm forced to stay away from Andromeda, whereas Petunia's just being, well, impossible._

_Speaking of family, don't let my cousin give you any trouble! Tell him that if he gives you a hard time, he'll have me to answer to (even though he might not actually find that threatening. Oh well.) Sirius, I mean. Obviously. Regulus is too mindful of authority to try anything. He always was eager to please. Tell them both I say hello._

_Write me back sooner than I wrote you? Tell me what's going on at Hogwarts! Who's Head Boy? Is he cute? (He can't be worse than Macnair was.) What classes are you taking? What are your plans for after school? D'you have a boyfriend yet? Tell me everything. I feel so out of the loop, and you're probably only on the train as I write this. Ugh. Being old sucks._

_Lots of love,_

_Pigeon_

_Oh, PS: I didn't know where the Head's dorms were, so I just sent Norah to Gryffindor tower. I hope this letter finds you okay. Actually, if it didn't, you wouldn't be reading this, so I guess it's a non-issue. Okay! Bye for real now._

Lily's smile was enormous. Affection for her friend bubbled through her as she quickly read through the letter. She and Narcissa Black had become friends in Lily's third year, when the two of them refused to be impressed by the Marauder's attempts to make every book in the library sing their text. They'd hit it off quickly, and had been friends ever since. She'd written Narcissa over the summer, when she'd gotten her Head Girl badge, and had been surprised that she hadn't received a more prompt response, although from the sound of it, this new boyfriend of hers had been occupying her time.

“Thanks, Julia,” she said happily, “I've been waiting for this. I -” her brain stalled for a second when she realized how Mary and Alice had occupied themselves while she was reading her letter. A tower of rolls and carrot sticks, held together with what looked like melted cheese had arisen in front of the two girls, high enough that Alice had to stand on the bench to add to it.

“I can’t reach anymore,” Alice said, pouting.

Mary pulled the textbooks out of her bag and piled them on the bench beside Alice’s feet. “Here - I don’t trust myself with the finishing touches.”

Alice beamed and began to decorate the top of the tower with broccoli florets as Julia started work on a mashed potato moat.

Lily watched her friends in amusement for a minute or so before standing up. “Well, we've got a bit before Charms starts, so I'm going to pop over to the library and figure out what I'm going to say to Narcissa. I'll see you all at class. Save me a seat, Jules?”

As soon as the Head Girl had walked out of earshot, her three friends huddled closer together. “Round one was a success!” Alice said happily. “Are we going to try again for Charms?

“Lily should be late of her own volition,” Mary reminded the girls, “She always takes a long time writing letters.”

Alice nodded. “Right. Then I'll hold James up, Mary you hold me a seat and...” She turned to Julia. “Julia, you sit next to whichever Marauder is alone, so that James can't get out of this.”

The other two girls nodded their assent, and Alice glowed, exhilarated by the prospect of match-making.

* * *

_Pigeon,_ Lily's response began.

_It's the weirdest feeling being a Seventh Year. How long did it take you to get used to this, used to being the oldest in the Castle, and about to leave, and all this? Actually, don't answer that, I don't want to know._

_And about Lucius - Congratulations! I'm so happy for you – he was in Slytherin as well, yeah? I don't remember much about him, after all, he was three years above me, but I remember Sev saying good things about him, so I'm sure he's wonderful._

_My summer was uneventful, actually. Getting my badge was by far the most exciting thing. I think that Petunia’s latest boyfriend might stick. I’m shuddering thinking about it. He looks like a walrus, it's actually rather awful. He's such a - it feels uncharitable and petty to call him a loser, but I can’t think of anything better. Still, she loves him and he makes her happy, so I guess that's what's important?_

_Actually, speaking of your cousin, you'd never guess what the Marauders pulled at the Welcome Feast this year. Go on, guess. I'll wait._

_Nothing. They actually did nothing. Did something happen over the summer that would have made Sirius decide to take it all down a notch? Or is this new change of heart of Potter's rubbing off on him?_

_Oh yeah, speaking of which, James Potter's Head Boy. I know, who would have thought? I’m not going to lie, I was definitely angry about it at first, but I guess Dumbledore knew something that I didn't, because he seems to have mellowed a lot. As in, not every sentence out of his mouth is about himself, and he's actually apologized to me a couple of times for things that weren't even really his fault. I swear that this school has gone crazy without you._

_No boyfriend yet, but if I find a guy I like, I'll let you know, yeah? I don't know, it just seems a little idealistic to latch yourself onto somebody at school. I mean, how many of these school time relationships go the distance? Not many, I'd imagine._

_Hugs,_

_Snake-Soul_

Lily signed her letter and folded the parchment carefully, stashing it away in her bookbag. She started to make her way out of the library to get to class, and was rounding a corner when -

“Oof,” she grunted. “No running in the halls. Filch might catch you, and it wouldn't be pretty.”

“Oh don't worry about me” came a familiar voice. Lily looked up to see who she'd run into, and found herself staring into the eyes of James Potter. “I've got experience getting away from him. I was looking for you, actually; Alice told me to check on you, to make sure you're not late again.”

“Oh no - what time is it? How long've we got to get to class?”

“Well I didn't really know where you were, so...” He checked his pocket watch. “Uh, class started four minutes ago.”

A couple of seconds passed in silence as Lily stared at James in disbelief before she shook her head and shrugged, saying “D'you think Flitwick would buy the “Official Head Business” excuse?”

James chuckled at the suggestion. “Maybe if we walked in soaking wet or covered in ink, it'd be more believable.”

Lily grinned. “ _Impervius_ ” she said, pointing her wand at her bookbag. She stepped back from a confused looking James Potter, before turning her wand on him and clearly enunciating “ _aguamenti._ ”

A great spray of water erupted from the tip of Lily's wand, utterly drenching the Head Boy. “What was that for?” he demanded, spitting out a mouthful of water.

“It was your idea,” she shrugged innocently, “Make it more believable, no?”

* * *

A soaked Head Boy and Girl eventually made it to Charms fifteen minutes late, having been unfortunately detained, Lily explained to Flitwick, by a series of exploding taps in the third floor girl's lavatory. She suspected Peeves, she whispered confidentially, before dragging the Head Boy to sit down in the back of the classroom. The two sat down and, wiping their soaking hands off as best they could on their drenched robes, began to take notes as Flitwick returned to his lecture on the Protean Charm.

“This isn't working,” Lily muttered after a couple of minutes, pushing away a ruined sheet of parchment. “I'm still dripping and I can't even hold the quill properly. _Muffliato_ ” she said quietly, after pulling out her wand. “This isn't going to become a habit or anything is it? The muffliato in class, I mean?”

James shrugged. “Sirius and I used to do it pretty much every day.”

“How you two manage the marks you do, I'll never know.” She picked helplessly at her sopping robes, before groaning. “Honestly, I keep forgetting I'm a witch.” Pulling out her wand, she performed a hot-air charm, drying her hands and robes off. She shook her head sadly. “Wish I could dry my hair without it getting all frizzy.”

“Aaah, forgot about that one” James admitted. “Do me?”

Lily raised an eyebrow at the statement, but dried out the boy's outstretched hands, passing her wand over his body to dry out his robes. “Cheers,” he said. “My hair?”

“Leave it that way,” she grinned, “It's neater than I've ever seen it.”

“You like neat hair?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Nah, it's just nice to not see you running your hands through it every twelve seconds.”

“I'm not that bad,” he protested.

The Head Girl snorted. “You don't even realize you're doing it anymore, do you? Look.” She tilted her chin towards his forehead, where his fingers were running carelessly through his hair. “You're doing it now.”

James blinked, pulling his hand out of his hair and staring at it, as if he couldn't for the life of him figure out whose hand it was attached to the end of his arm. “How often did you say I do that?”

“I probably exaggerated,” she admitted, “But you do mess with it quite a bit.”

“It makes me look windswept and rugged,” James sniffed, “The ladies love it.”

“Your mum doesn’t count,” Lily replied, “She has to say you look nice.”

“I- what? Excuse you-” James spluttered, “She does not.”

Lily turned back to the front of the room, satisfied that she’d won that round.

“Er,” said James after a few seconds of silence, “Not to reinforce the image you have of me or anything, but what's Flitwick been going on about?”

“Protean Charms,” Lily replied, lazily waving her hand in dismissal of the lecture.

“Right. Weren't you going to take notes or whatever?”

“Why? Were you going to ask for a copy?”

“No, I mean, isn't that your thing? Taking notes and being a good student and all?”

Lily shrugged. “I'm good at Charms. I learned this stuff on my own in fifth year. Flitwick knows that I'm not really learning much in class, so I sort of just sit here.”

“Evans, my illusions of our Head Girl are just tumbling down around me.”

“How d'you figure?”

“Well, in the space of today, you've been late to both your classes, you've sat in the back of them chatting, you've attacked the Head Boy with water and then lied to the professor about it, and just now you've admitted that you don't pay attention in class.”

“Maybe you're a bad influence,” Lily suggested.

“Me? I don't know what you're talking about” James said haughtily. “I'll have you know that not only am I Head Boy and Gryffindor's Quidditch Captain, but I also maintain near-perfect grades and an active social life. There is no time for any shenanigans in the life of James Potter.”

“Right, and I'm a half-troll Slytherin who plays for Puddlemore.”

James winced. “Puddlemere. But everything else there sounded about right.”

“Again with the compliments, Potter. Smooth talk like that, and a girl'll think you fancy her.”

James just shrugged. “Well, feel free to jump to your own hasty conclusions.”

Lily snorted. “Right, Potter. Your affections for me aside, when did you learn about Protean Charms?”

“Haven't, yet.”

Lily blanched. “Really? I just figured... Really? Oh Merlin, I'm sorry for distracting you, I'll just shut up so you can pay attention.”

“Evans, you really don't know how the Marauders work at all, do you?”

Lily gasped, eyes wide in sudden realization. “So you do just skive off of Remus! I knew it!”

James looked at her blankly. “What? No. What? That's not it at all. Remus wouldn't let us copy even if we asked, and believe us, we don't.”

“So Remus works hard and… You and Sirius skive off of Peter?”

James snorted at the suggestion. “Merlin, no. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Peter’s pretty brilliant in his own way, but he learns pretty differently from the rest of us.”

“How so?”

“Well, Remus does that whole listen-to-teachers and write-things-down thing that you usually have going on, but Peter just sits down and tries spells or potions or whatever over and over until he gets it right. Usually takes him a fair while, but he always gets it in the end.”

“And you and Sirius?”

“We generally just wing it.”

“You... You wing it” Lily repeated weakly.

James shrugged. “Charms and Transfiguration are mostly just built up on what you've learned before, yeah? So it's not that hard to do. Only class that takes a bit of prep is Potions, but only since Slughorn's been making us test the stuff we make.” He chuckled. “Sirius had, eh, an accident last year that we're not keen to replicate.”

Lily let out a feeble chuckle. “Potter, honestly, if you're serious about that, I really haven't given you enough credit for the past few years. That's... That's brilliant. You two are brilliant.”

James scoffed at the suggestion. “Evans, you beat us on every exam we sit.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well yes, but my way takes a bit of hard work and loss of sleep. You and Black are... Wow. Winging it. That's something else.”

She sat back quietly, having said all that she cared to. After watching her carefully for a couple of seconds and deciding that he wouldn't be getting much conversation out of her for the rest of the class period, James turned to Flitwick with a sigh, trying to catch the end of the lecture for lack of anything more entertaining to occupy himself with.

* * *

Lily walked into the Great Hall having just gotten out of Ancient Runes – a class that she shared only with two Hufflepuffs that she'd never really talked to, and a quiet Ravenclaw girl who'd somehow managed to get into N.E.W.T. Runes as a Fifth-Year. She made her way to her usual spot and took her seat: between Mary and Julia, with Alice to Mary's left. When she sat down, Alice and Julia were locked in fierce debate.

“Eggs are better fried,” Alice insisted, “Because then you can dip bread in the yolks and it tastes better that way!”

“No,” Julia argued, “Scrambled eggs are the best because you can eat them with spoons.”

“But they're all chunky and gross!”

“Fried eggs are too slimy.”

Lily looked at Mary and raised an eyebrow questioningly. Mary sighed. “Honestly, Lils, you know how they are.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially and added, “I told them that hard-boiled eggs were the best because you got to peel them, which is fun, but they just won't listen.”

Lily chuckled and happily dug into her vegetable soup while listening to the two girls debate the virtues of various styles of prepared breakfast foods. She felt, in that moment, utterly content, surrounded by the happy chatter of her friends, with a warm bowl of food in front of her.

Of course, as is the case at any school, contentment was short lived. Lily's good mood lasted all through dinner, as she heard, but did not listen to, Alice's and Julia's argument. It lasted through her walk to the Gryffindor Tower, where she bade her friends good night, and she whistled all the way back to her own dorms, stopping only to give the password to the elderly statue.

It lasted, essentially, until she began her homework.

It wasn't that the Protean Charm was hard to perform; it was more that since the class had been unable to grasp the theory and techniques behind the complex spell, Flitwick had asked the Head Girl to create enough charmed clay tiles for everyone in the class to work with. She understood how the magic functioned, and she knew how to work it, but it was tedious work, and was given to her on top of everything else she'd been assigned that day. Furthermore, Charms was the most populated class in the school – nearly every Seventh Year was taking it, which meant that Lily had some eighty tiles to spell, each of which had to be done individually.

An hour or so into her task, James entered the Common Room, crossed over to one of the armchairs by a window, and pulled out a thick volume on Quidditch strategy.

“Twelve,” she grouched, before Summoning another tile from the bag that Flitwick had provided her. At least it was quiet – even though it was a shared space with Potter, the Head's Common Room was much, much quieter than the Gryffindor Common Room, or even her old dorm; Alice had a habit of humming tunelessly to herself while working, and six years of it had all but driven Lily insane.

She closed her eyes, concentrating hard on the intricate spellwork. Waving her wand over one of the completed tiles, she traced a complicated rune, muttering incantations under her breath. She turned her wand to the fresh tile, and repeated the motion, albeit in reverse. The whole set of tiles glowed briefly with a pulsing yellow light, before fading back to their original dull grey.

“Thirteen.”

The room's silence was punctuated only by the occasional rustle of a page, by Lily's counting, and by the clatter of the clay tiles in the bag.

“Fourteen.”

James sighed. He'd been listening to Lily's counting for about half an hour now, and although he was loathe to disturb the otherwise silent space, he couldn't just sit and read, not with her in the mood she was. “What's all that, Evans?” he asked from his armchair across the room.

“Charms,” she groused, “Flitwick wants me to provide examples of the Protean Charm, because our class didn't understand it.”

“Right. And how many do you have to go?”

“Eighty less fourteen... Sixty-six left.”

He groaned. “At this rate, you'll be- Hang on, is he having you do the essay, too?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don't remind me. As if this isn't tedious enough, forty inches on a charm I've been doing for as many months?”

James chuckled. “Right. Do you want help with that, then?”

“The charm or the essay?”

“I don't think our handwritings really match up.”

“I thought you didn't know the Protean?”

“How hard could it be to learn?”

“Too hard for our class, apparently.”

He grinned. “Try me.”

Lily levelled a careful look across the room at the Head Boy before shrugging her shoulders. “If you're offering help, I won't pass it up. Come here and pull up a chair. It's all in the wrist, see? The rune has to be exactly the same, but which one you choose depends on what properties you're using the charm for...”

  



	3. With a Little Help From My Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the same day as Chapter 2, as seen from non-Lily POVs.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to my beta @starsailor!

**Friday, September 2nd, 1977**

Julia sat up in bed, yawned sleepily, and shook her head, trying to banish the last of the night's drowsiness. Sunlight was pouring in through the arched windows and she blinked, the sudden change in brightness straining her eyes. A glance at the clock once her eyes adjusted informed her that it was early enough that Alice and Mary would not appreciate her making much noise, so she carefully tiptoed to the bathroom, the stone floor cool underneath her feet.

Unlike some of her classmates (one red-headed girl in particular came to mind) Julia loved mornings. She loved the sense of solitude and quiet that accompanied being the only one awake. When at home, she woke up early enough to wait for her father to go to work, sitting happily in the kitchen nursing a cup of tea while keeping his warm on the stove. The mornings felt still, they felt peaceful and serene, and that was how Julia liked the world; her early mornings were a welcome foil to the constant activity and general pandemonium that marked a day at Hogwarts.

Of course, another benefit to waking up first was uncontested use of the bathroom's facilities, but as an only child, that was something that Julia took for granted. Still, it was safe to say that Julia took longer showers than the rest of the school, if only because she never had anyone pestering her to finish up.

She took her time in the shower, humming happily as she did. Still, despite having gone through her entire morning routine, when she returned to the bedroom, her two roommates were still fast asleep, Alice sprawled out, taking up as much space as she could, while Mary lay, huddled up in one corner of her bed. She frowned at their lazy forms. She tapped her foot for a couple of minutes, but her hunger eventually won out, and she made her way down to the Great Hall. They'd know where she’d gone. 

The Great Hall was, when she arrived, just as empty as her dorm had been. It wasn't the first time that Julia had been the earliest to breakfast, nor would it be the last. It was nice being the only one in the Great Hall, she thought. For one thing, you could hear yourself think, and for another, the food was hotter, which was a definite plus.

She sat alone, munching happily on a plate of scrambled eggs. It was another five minutes or so until other people began to file in, some of them yawning drowsily, others excitedly chattering about their plans for the new year. She spotted Alice and Mary and waved at them cheerfully, motioning for them to come and sit.

“Morning,” Alice yawned, “Have you got your schedule yet?”

Julia shook her head. “Waited for you.”

Alice smiled, appeased by this answer, and began to fill her plate with eggs and toast.

“We should go now though, before everybody rushes McGonagall,” Mary suggested.

Alice looked mournfully at her plate, but knew that Mary had a point, so the three girls walked over and collected their schedules from the Transfiguration professor.

“Potions first,” Mary noted, “Julia, you still up for making them late?”

Julia nodded, expression thoughtful. This was their plan, what the three girls had discussed the night before. After Alice had decided that it was imperative that James and Lily learn to work well together, she'd made the logical jump that it was necessary that they somehow contrive to get the pair to sit next to each other during class. Julia's task was to make sure that both James and Lily were late to class, while Alice and Mary were to make sure that no seats were available for either of the Heads to escape to. 

Furthermore, Alice had declared, in a tone so dramatic that Mary had snorted, that were Julia to risk being late herself, that it would be better for her to just ditch class altogether. “Better take a cut than risk our plan be discovered by the enemy!” she had announced. Mary had had to smack her in the back of the head and remind the girl that they were match-making, not fighting a war.

Julia had agreed to this plan partially because it sounded fun, partially because she never really learned anything in Potions that Lily couldn't teach her later, and partially because of something that had caught her eye the night before. It wasn't strange to see Regulus Black hiding his face at dinner; he had always been rather quiet. It wasn't strange to see him hunched over his dinner, as close to his food as he could be, because everybody had their hungry days. It was strange, however, to see, just for a split second, a large gash, angry and ragged down his cheek, and a bruise staining his exposed neck a mottled purple when he let his guard down.

So really, Julia had agreed to the plan only because of the excuse it would give her to skive off of class, and talk to Regulus. It wasn't that she was ashamed of being his friend, it was that for their relationship to work, he couldn't be seen with her. 

Lily arrived, performed her mandatory early-morning grouching, which Julia was able to handily defuse, and scurried off to McGonagall for her schedule. By this time, class was about to start (and Julia had been sitting in the Great Hall for over and hour and a half) so the three girls got up to leave. Better that they head to class without Lily, anyway; there'd be a higher chance of their plan's success if they didn't walk with her. “Good luck!” Alice chirped, before linking her arm with Mary's and heading off towards the dungeons.

Julia grinned at the receding figures of her friends, before turning to the tasks at hand. First, figure out Regulus' schedule, and see when she could confront him. Second, ensure that Lily and James be late to class. Priorities. She stood up and scanned the Hall; students were chattering, talking, milling about; a few of them were even heading to class. Her eyes spotted a dark-haired figure, alone and hunched over, snaking his way through the crowds. She jogged over and followed him up a staircase and down a hall, until there was no one else around. “Reg!” she hissed.

He spun, startled, hand shooting to his pocket, to his wand, before he realized who it was. “Julia,” he breathed, “Merlin, you startled me. What's going on?”

She frowned. Typical of him to expect an attack instead of a friend. “Reg, you were hurt last night. What's going on? Do you have class now?”

His hand unconsciously went to his cheek, smooth skin where there had been wounded flesh the night before. “Severus patched me up,” he admitted, “And no, Mother told me that Care was a useless class, so I dropped it.”

She glanced at a nearby grandfather clock; she was going to have to move quickly to hold up James and Lily. “I have to go do something really quick for a secret plan that Alice came up with, but I want to talk to you. Meet me in the kitchens in ten minutes?”

He nodded, and she turned and sprinted down the hall and down two flights of stairs.

She spotted Lily about three minutes from class. Glancing around for a suitable distraction, her eyes fell on a small girl, either a First or a Second year by the look of her, tugging along a bag far too big to be healthy for her back. Frowning at what she had to do (there was no time left to find something else, she reasoned) she pulled out her wand and muttered first an apology, then _ “diffindo.” _ The girl squealed, and Julia ducked out of sight. 

Once she saw that Lily was thoroughly occupied, Julia hurried down the hall again, careful to avoid being spotted by her friend, until she found James, heading in from a side hall. She didn't have much time, and really, finding out what had happened to Regulus was more important than all of this right now. She looked carefully at her surroundings, spotting a drinking fountain, currently patronized by a rather stout boy. She flicked her wand and, taking careful aim at the tap, murmured _ “reducto,” _ scurrying off as soon as she heard James' “Oi! You okay there, mate?”

Kitchens. Kitchens. She trotted off, shaking her head to banish the pangs of guilt that followed vandalism of school property, minor bullying, and skiving off of class.

She made it to the painting of a bowl of fruit rather quickly, although she was still a couple of minutes later than she'd promised. She tickled the pear (a trick that Mary had showed the girls, courtesy of a friendship with the Marauders) and stepped inside. Regulus was sitting at a small wooden table, sipping coffee and looking intensely uncomfortable. “'Lo,” he muttered. 

She took the seat across from him, resting her hands on the light blue tablecloth. “Reg,” she said softly to her friend, “What happened?”

He laughed unhappily. “Same thing as always. Mum can't really punish Sirius now that he's moved out.”

“Can you start from the beginning?” she asked.

He thought about it for a full minute, while Julia silently watched him, his eyes closed, and his brow furrowed with the effort. Finally, he opened his eyes. “I don't really know what the beginning of all this is,” he admitted, “I've told you a lot already, but it's all so intertwined.”

She frowned. “From as far back as you can go?” she suggested. “Sometimes, talking through everything helps.”

He sighed. “Well, if you’re cutting Potions then neither of us has class until after lunch, so I suppose we've time.” He scratched thoughtfully at a phantom cut, running his fingers distractedly over his cheek. “Well, let's start with Sirius then. Mum never really did get over his being Sorted into Gryffindor. That was an awful day in the Black household, Mum holding his letter and screaming. She wasn't angry, really, not yet. She was just sad at first, you know? Like, disappointed, because she'd always seen Gryffindor as one of the disgraceful Houses, so she was more upset than anything else.” 

He frowned, and took another sip of his coffee before continuing.

“So then I had to put up with two years of her calling my older brother, the brother I'd grown up idolizing, a disappointment. And I didn't like that, but I didn't want to put her through that twice, I didn't want to be anything but a Slytherin, because no matter how much I thought Sirius was a role model, everyone wants to see their mum pleased, right?” He blanched when he realized what he'd said, quickly trying to amend his statement. “I mean- Shit. I didn't mean that Julia, you know that I-”

She cut him off with a finger pressed to his lips. “Shhh. It's okay. I don't cry about it anymore.”

He frowned, but continued on, a little more careful with his wording this time. “So then I got to Hogwarts myself. This was five years ago. I was eleven, Merlin, I didn't know anything about who I was then, I just knew that I didn't want to see my Mum crying anymore because her son was a disappointment. So I begged the Sorting Hat to put me in Slytherin. Did you know that it was originally going to say Hufflepuff?” He chuckled weakly. “I can only imagine how Mum would have responded to that one. I was there for a good thirty seconds, arguing with that damn hat that I had to be in Slytherin. Anyway, it was about halfway through my first year, Sirius' third year, that he started letting on at home how he felt about the whole blood-purity thing. I mean, I've never been all that chuffed about it, but he really hated it. He and Mum would yell at each other about it over breaks, they'd send each other the nastiest letters. She couldn't get over the fact that he was 'betraying the family name' or whatever, and he couldn't get over the fact that she was a bigot.”

A pause, while he dropped another sugar cube into his cup, stirring it in slowly.

“And that continued for a few years. They'd just yell and scream at each other, until this summer, they got into this huge row.” The boy shuddered at the memory, his fingers clenching his mug until his knuckles paled. “I was in bed at the time, and I remember hearing them screaming and cursing, and things breaking. And then I heard him scream that he couldn't stay in the house anymore, and he left.” Regulus shrugged. “I guess he's been staying at Potter's, because they showed up to the train together.”

Julia frowned. She'd heard from Mary that Sirius and James were living together, but hadn't heard the circumstances. She wondered vaguely if Lily knew, but pushed that thought to the back of her mind.

“So anyway, after he left, Mum kind of lost it. Even throughout all the fighting and disagreements, she'd been planning for Sirius to take over the family name, to be the heir to the Blacks and all that. And then for a bit, she seemed okay with the idea of me doing it instead, but that kept changing. One day she'd be great, smiling, even, and trying to get me ready to take over the family name, and then the next, she'd be a lunatic again, hexing vases and blowing up tables, and I learned to stay away from her on days like that.” His hand moved to his left shoulder, rubbing unconsciously at a remembered pain. “But on her good days, I try to encourage her. Sirius can't be the Black family heir, I mean, look at him. He doesn't agree with any of that pure-blood crap.”

For the first time in a while, Julia spoke up. “Do you?” she asked quietly.

He stopped, mouth open in anticipation of a different sentence. “No,” he admitted, “But priorities, right? I have to keep Mum from hexing everything around her or from going after Sirius or something, and the easiest way to do that is to just go along with what she says. So I pretend.”

“And your cheek?”

He laughed unhappily. “The day before I left was a bad day. I knew it was, but I wanted to say good-bye, you know? This is my mum. I wanted to say good-bye before I didn't see her again for three and a half months.” His hand was back to his cheek. “So I went down to say bye, and she blew up this bust of my great-great-grandfather or someone like that, and a couple of pieces hit my face. It wasn't that bad. Really. Sev was able to fix it up in a couple of minutes.”

The pair sat in silence for a minute, Julia staring at the boy across from her, Regulus scratching at his cheek.

She tilted her head to the side, as if the change in angle would somehow help her see what she should say. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“What I have to,” he shrugged. “If I don't agree to be heir, Mum'd probably go off the deep end entirely. She's already teetering as is, and I can't disturb that. She'd probably go after Sirius or something, and I can't have that on my conscience.”

“What do you want to do?”

He shook his head. “Doesn't matter. I mean, I'm going to become heir and lead the family no matter what I want, so there's no point in thinking about that.”

“But if you could do anything? What would it be?”

He frowned. “I- I actually haven't thought about that,” he admitted. 

“Well let me know, okay?” Julia suddenly grinned, the expression far more familiar on her face than the melancholy from before. “Think about it and let me know. Because even if it doesn't work out, you still have to be happy and hope sometimes. So you can with me!”

Regulus tried to fight it, but Julia's good humour was too infectious to not be affected by. “Absolutely, Julia. Yeah, I will.” 

And the funny thing was, he meant it.

With that, the heavy subject matter was dropped and traded in for light-hearted discussion more typical of children their age. The conversation was comfortable and pleasant, lasting until the proximity of lunch time made the kitchens too loud to continue talking. “I should go,” Regulus yelled, “I have to make a showing at the table. Bellatrix is expecting me to be there, and she owls Mum twice a week or so.”

Julia frowned, but nodded. Their friendship ran more smoothly when the nastier side of Slytherin House wasn't aware of it. Actually, it ran more smoothly when no one was aware of it. “Owl me when you want to talk next?”

“Don't I always?”

And with that, the two departed the kitchens (a safe five minutes or so apart, Regulus leaving first, looking as innocent as he could manage.)

Julia was heading towards the Great Hall, hoping to get to lunch on time, when she ran into her friends. “Hi!” she said, pulling up behind them. “How was Potions?”

* * *

“ _Fuck_ _ , _ ” Remus thought, “ _Damn, shit, hell_ _ , cock. Here? Of all places, you've got to sit here?” _

“Hello then, Padfoot,” Remus said, “You sitting here, then?”

Sirius pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Prongs isn't here yet, and Wormy's sitting with Saito.” He pulled the most simpering smile he could, before whining, “Why? Don't you want to sit with me, Moons?”

“ _ No, _ ” thought Remus.

“Nah, go for it,” he said, trying his very best to keep his voice steady.

“Brill,” Sirius grinned, clapping Remus on the back, “Don't worry, I won't distract you from taking notes, or whatever it is that you do instead of having fun.”

Remus would have contested two of the points that Sirius had made in his last sentence. First of all, he didn't take notes as a replacement for fun, he took notes because unlike James and Sirius, not everyone could coast by on what really seemed to be genius-level intellect. Secondly, no matter what Sirius did, short of leave the room, it was pretty much a given that he'd distract Remus.

You see, the unfortunate secret of the Marauders was that, unknown to his three compatriots, Remus Lupin was positive of the fact that he was in love with Sirius Black.

It wasn't something that got in the way too much; at least, not when he wasn't alone with the boy. When James and Peter were around, it was easier to hide his infatuation, easier to distract himself from Sirius' face, from his hair, from his lips. It was when they were alone, when there was nothing for Remus to focus on besides the object of his affections (because really, who can pay attention to the Protean Charm when your crush is sitting right next to you) that it really began to be a problem.

He was sweating, he was sure of it. His mouth felt dry, and it was taking colossal effort to not turn his head every two seconds to stare at the raven-haired beauty next to him. Not that Sirius would have noticed; he'd fallen asleep almost as soon as Flitwick had begun his lecture. Still, it was the principle of the thing, and Remus was convinced that if he looked, he wouldn't be able to stop, and surely somebody would notice if Remus Lupin spent an entire lesson staring at Sirius Black instead of taking notes. 

And so, entirely without meaning to, Sirius Black distracted Remus Lupin from the lesson, inadvertently contributing to a classwide inability to grasp the Protean Charm.

The bell rang, and Sirius opened his eyes, groggily shaking his head. “Did I miss anything then, Moons?”

“ _ How the fuck would _ I _ know, you prat? I've been trying not to stare at you this whole bloody period. _ ”

“Nah, you'll be fine.” And with that, Remus stood up as quickly as he could, gathering his things, and rushing out of the classroom, and away from Sirius.

It wasn't that Remus was scared of confessing, not really. He was, after all, a Gryffindor, and that kind of bold confession was just the kind of thing his house was known for. No, he hid his feelings for a very lionish reason indeed: loyalty. 

There were three main reasons that Remus refused to act upon his feelings.

First, and most pressingly, Sirius did not like him back. This was evident by the string of girlfriends that marched, regular as clockwork, through the other boy's life. If Sirius didn't like him, then not only was there no point in confessing, but he could only see it hurting their friendship. Remus refused to be pitied; he'd had enough of that as a werewolf.

Which brought him to point two: lycanthropy. Sirius knew that Remus was a werewolf and seemingly didn't care. He still hung out with boy, he still considered him a friend, a Marauder. Becoming a werewolf's boyfriend though, was a much different sort of commitment, and one that Remus did not want to make anyone undertake. He already felt like he was burdening his friends enough just by being their friend, and he felt no need to add to that.

Thirdly, but no less importantly, even assuming that the first two problems suddenly vanished, and Sirius magically wanted Remus, wolf and all, there was no way of knowing how James and Peter would react to such a relationship, and Remus would always put his friendships first. It wasn't that any of the Marauders were homophobic, or had expressed any such sentiment in the past, it was more that a relationship would necessarily throw off the dynamic that the four had, and Remus knew first hand just how important the kind of bond that they shared would be.

All in all, Remus Lupin felt rather justified in not saying anything regarding his non-platonic feelings towards Sirius to anyone. After all, it was better for everyone that he remain silent. Except for himself, of course, but he thought that the burden of his secret was well worth his continued friendships.

Of course, he wasn't running over those three reasons in his head as he walked off. No, as Remus walked off, all he could think of was escaping Sirius and getting to Arithmancy on time. He should be safe, Sirius had to go in the other direction for Care of Magical Creatures (which he was only taking to annoy his mom, and _ why did Remus remember things that Sirius had said in passing three years ago. _ ) Remus shook his head, trying to clear the face of his friend out of his mind, when:

“Oy, Moons, hold up a sec,” Sirius panted out, “You storm off quicker than Evans does when Prongs is around.” He bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

“ _Fuck,_ _  shit, I'd almost gotten away, too, _ ” Remus thought.

“Sorry about that,” Remus apologized, “Didn't mean to go off that fast.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Look, Moons, I know I slack off in class, but I'm not stupid. I know what's wrong. I know why you ran off.”

Remus' blood turned cold. On the one hand, Sirius didn't look angry, or upset, or murderous, so that was good, but on the other hand, he knew what was wrong. His mind was racing, trying to come up with some way to explain, to play it off, to pretend that it was nothing.

“Er... Do you?” he managed weakly.

Sirius smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, I reckon you're ticked off because Prongs is trying to turn over a new leaf, and I'm still the same git I've always been.”

“ _ Maybe if I just tell him it's the wolf in m- What? _ ”

“What?” Remus blinked. Twice. “Come again?”

“Yeah, you've always been after us to get on a bit better, and to be model, upstanding citizens like yourself. And now Prongs has gone and gone all boring- I mean, good, and you don't approve of Worms and I being prats. That's why you didn't want me to sit just then in Charms, right?”

“ _ Not even close. _ ”

“Right. Right, yeah, that's it. You two've been right gits.” For once, Remus found himself blessing his friend's inability to understand people besides himself and James. 

“So I reckon if Prongs can do it, Worms and I can do it as well. Role models to the rest of the house and all that.” Sirius beamed, happy with himself at having discovered the root of his friend's dissatisfaction. “So then. Good thing we've got that sorted, because we're going to be sitting together for the rest of term.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“What?”

“I mean, I figure that Prongs is going to be trying to sit next to Evans, and I'm _ pretty _ sure that Worms fancies Saito, so that leaves you and me.” Sirius scratched thoughtfully at the scruff on his chin, before adding, “Good thing too, I don't think that we've had a proper conversation, just you and me, since what, second year? Be nice to talk to someone other than Prongs, he's always going on and on about Evans, and it gets old.”

Remus blanched. “ _ A whole term? I barely survived a day. _ ”

“Er, so we're sitting together for the whole term then?”

Sirius chuckled. “Aaah, don't worry about it, Moons, I was only joking. I'll keep my mouth nice and quiet during class. I know how you studious types are.” And with that, he winked at Remus and hurried off towards his next class, leaving a spell-shocked boy behind, gaping at his friend's back.

“ _Damn_ _. _ ”

* * *

Melanie Greengrass picked desolately at the chicken stew that she had chosen for dinner. It wasn't that she wasn't hungry; she was, ravenously so. It wasn't that the food wasn't good either; despite coming from an old pure-blooded family and therefore having grown up with house-elves her whole life, Melanie never ceased to be impressed by the quality of the food at Hogwarts. No, it was more the fact that being at Hogwarts was a forcible reminder of just how lonely Melanie Greengrass felt on a regular basis, and such loneliness was rather unappetizing.

At home, she spent much of her time by herself. Her parents, both wizards of respectable lineage, worked in the Ministry, which left them little time at home to interact with their only child. She was by no means a neglected child or the victim of any kind of abuse. She was merely lonely. She preferred to read in her room, or to sit by herself and think, but that didn't mean that she didn't sometimes wish for a friend or a sibling to share her time with.

However, more than anything right now, Melanie Greengrass felt estranged from her House. It seemed that taking in only pure-bloods wasn't limiting enough; there were other standards that the members of Slytherin House had to live up to. 

Melanie was far too studious, far too quiet, far too deferent to her teachers to fully assimilate into Slytherin. Or, at least, too studious, too quiet, too deferent to her teachers to fully live up to what the most out-spoken members of her House believed the Slytherin ideal to be.

In reality, she wasn't alone, not at all. Things had been better when Narcissa Black was around and Head Girl; the meeker side of Slytherin had felt her loss acutely. Where there had once stood a bubbly, enthusiastic leader, there was now a void that was being filled, apparently, by the likes of Bellatrix Black and Mulciber.

It wasn't a reign of terror, not by a long shot, but it was definitely an environment much less receptive to enthusiasm and exuberance than it had been before. It was hard to reach out and to try and find like-minded individuals with the threat of a snarling upper-class man (or woman, in the case of Bellatrix) ready to censure you for giving the Slytherins a bad name for being childish, or a brown noser, or a swot.

There were a lot of unspoken rules in Slytherin. Among them were “Do not ask for help,” “Do not talk to Gryffindors,” “Do not be a swot,” and “Do not talk back to Bellatrix Black.” They weren't really rules as much as they were general guidelines that young Slytherins learned to follow lest their quality of life substantially fall off. Again, these guidelines had been relaxed in the presence of Narcissa Black, but with her gone, things were not as simple.

Melanie had never really subscribed to the train of thought that dictated that “Gryffindors were evil,” after all, her father was a Slytherin, but her mother had been a Gryffindor, back in the day. Still, all interactions that she'd had with them until this day had been less than savory. 

She'd only been at Hogwarts one year, but that year had, unfortunately for her peace of mind, been the Marauder's sixth. As pranksters, they were without peer. As ambassadors for Gryffindor house, they were rather polarizing. A substantial percentage of the student body (and more professors than one would think) believed that the Marauders were hilarious, intelligent, and worthy of respect. The minority (comprised mostly of Slytherins, and the Ravenclaws who were upset at the constant defacement of the library) believed that they were juvenile, disrespectful, and had no place at the school.

Melanie was rather on the fence regarding the quartet. On the one hand, everyone around her seemed to think that they were worse than finding doxie eggs in your pumpkin juice. On the other, she'd never really found any of their pranks dangerous or harmful, and she preferred to form opinions by herself. 

Which brought her to her current dilemma. The Head Girl. Lily had been nice, far nicer than any of her house-mates now that Narcissa was gone, and niceness was a commodity that her life was sorely lacking. The problem was that while they wouldn't hurt her physically, her house-mates could certainly make her life a lot harder were they to find out that she was friends with the Head Girl.

Melanie glared at the food on her plate, wanting, more than anything right now, a friend. Catty students and ripped bags would be a lot more bearable if only she had someone to bear it with, she decided.

* * *

Back in Gryffindor Tower, the team assigned to Operation Lames/Jily/Pevans was having a clandestine meeting. (Read: They were in their room, and had put an unnecessary Silencing Charm on the door.) Alice had a serious look on her face as she declared a state of emergency. “Lily never even came to dinner!” she wailed, panic creeping into her voice. “I haven't seen her since Flitwick held her back after class! She might be snogging James and not telling us, which would be a disaster, or else she got kidnapped or got into an accident and if that's the case, she'll never end up with him!”

It spoke to the state of Mary Macdonald's life that she was, at this point, used to the behavior of her best friend. “Al, she came to dinner.”

“And then she'll end up alone forever because she'll ne- She did?”

Mary sighed, explaining as patiently as she could to the over-excited blonde. “Yes. She did. You and Julia were arguing about eggs, remember?”

Julia smiled happily at the memory. She'd managed to win the argument by reminding Alice that while yes, you could eat fried eggs on top of hamburgers and sandwiches, you could put things _ inside _ scrambled eggs, and that clearly made them the superior method of preparation, a point that Alice reluctantly conceded.

Alice, however, was not so easily put at peace. “And she didn't even say hello? Did she have something to hide? Maybe she found out about Operation: Jily and she's deliberately withholding vital information! What about that?”

Mary laughed and threw a pillow at the hysterical girl. “Alice. Really. Calm down. This is Lily – I'd put down ten galleons that she doesn't even realize that James ever liked her at all, much less that he still does.”

Alice sobered. “I never understood that” she said, thought furrowing her brow. “He asked her out every other week, how did she not realize that he liked her?”

“Oh that's easy!” said Julia brightly. “Lily is really oblivious. Remember how insistent she was that Severus wasn’t into her? She probably thinks that James was making fun of her the whole time.”

“Exactly. And you know how Lils is, she doesn't really stop to overthink, she just sort of follows her first instinct as far as it can go” Mary said. 

Alice's face scrunched up as she tried to think about what these new revelations meant for Operation: Lames. “This calls for a change of tactics” she declared. “Instead of continuing our offensive, we must instead adopt a strategy of surveillance and information gathering!” before rattling off different methods of concealment and different ways to stealthily record conversations.

Mary groaned. With Lily gone to live with James, the task of “voice of reason in the room” was passed down to her, and in the room she was in, this was a far greater burden than any one girl should have to be entrusted with. Alice and Julia had spent an _ hour and a half _ arguing about eggs. She was vaguely worried that between them they'd find a way to burn down the magical stone castle if she didn't watch them closely enough.

Honestly, if she didn't dearly love them both, she would have absconded to Lily's and begged the Head Girl to let her live on her couch and hide from her classmates. As it was, she was listening to Alice talk about the Disillusionment Charm, and how useful it could be in figuring out exactly how Lily felt about James at the moment, and, more importantly, what it was that Lily knew about their plan. 

Scarily enough, Julia seemed to be on board with everything that Alice was saying.

“Al, this is ridiculous,” Mary eventually broke in, “A Disillusionment Charm? Following her back to her dorm to figure out where it is? Why can't we just go ask her?”

“Ask her what?” Alice asked, breaking off mid-tirade.

“Whatever it is that you're trying to find out through stealth?”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Mare, the whole point is that we don't know what she knows.”

“Ye-es,” Mary said, “Which is why I suggested just asking her about it.”

“But then she'd ask why we want to know! And if she wasn't already, asking her about James would definitely make her suspicious! And that would make her even more likely to withhold key information!”

It was Mary's turn to roll her eyes. “Al, have you ever known Lily to not tell us something important? If we ask her a question, she answers it. Right, Jules?”

Julia nodded. “Lily never did hide much from us.”

“But that's because her life is boring!” Alice wailed, “She never has a boyfriend, or detention, or _ anything _ ! There's no _ point _ in asking her questions!”

Mary snickered. “She's not boring, Al, she just knows how to not get in trouble - remember that time she convinced you to-”

“I get it” Alice said quickly. “Fine. You can ask her then, and Julia and I will continue on with our plans, so that Operation: Jily doesn't fail when she doesn't tell you anything.” And with that, Alice stuck her nose into the air, sniffed theatrically, and turned back to Julia.

May chuckled, and then groaned. It was 23:30, and she _ still _ hadn't started her homework. Oh, this was going to be a long night.


	4. Eleanor Rigby

**Wednesday, September 7, 1977**

_ Knock. Knock knock knock.  _

Lily woke up to her least favorite sound: something loud enough and insistent enough that she couldn’t get back to sleep. She wasn’t very discriminating in this respect. She groaned and pulled her pillow over her head, hoping that the added insulation would keep the insistent knocking out. It didn’t.

_ Knock. Knock knock knock. _

She groaned. It was entirely too early for this. The sun wasn’t even up y- Okay, actually, that was just the pillow on her head. It was actually quite bright out, Lily realized, as she tried to blink the sleep from her eyes. No matter. There was still a large stretch of time between “the sun rises” and “Lily ought to be awake.”

Entirely ready to tear whoever was responsible for this disaster of a morning limb from limb, Lily threw open the door to reveal Julia, all ready for the day with her bag and robes, holding up a toothbrush.

“Can I come in and brush my teeth?” Julia mumbled, taking care to open her mouth as little as possible. “The Song is playing and I didn’t want to be there.”

Mornings were terrible, but The Song meant an acute emergency, the kind of thing that superseded more mundane, day-to-day suffering. “Oh,” Lily said, sobering quickly, “Oh no. Yeah, of course Julia, come in.”

Julia shuffled into the common room that the two Heads shared. “Thanks, Lily.”

“Who was it this time? Was it that Ravenclaw bloke - you know, the one in sixth year who wears the hat everywhere?” 

Julia shook her head. “I think that they met in Italy and were keeping in touch by post - a foreign looking owl has been dropping letters off for Alice all week and she was holding one when she got the record player out.”

“Makes sense. I thought it was a little early in the term for this.”

Julia shook her head sadly and made her way into Lily and James’ bathroom, leaving Lily alone in her common room with the muted sound of running water.

Lily sighed. The Song was certainly hardest on Alice, but it was taxing on those around her. Lily’s own natural desire to help her friends and to see them happy was frustrated by her total inability to understand Alice’s struggles.

You see, the thing about Alice Fortescue was that she firmly believed in soulmates. She knew with every fiber of her being that for every person there was a single other person that would complete them. The problem was that her perception of who her own soulmate was changed with what an uncharitable viewer might call exasperating frequency.

Most of these candidates were discarded as quickly as they were picked up. Alice would realize that on the whole, Dmitri’s inability to look her in the eye when they talked made him an unsuitable soulmate despite his very nice hair, or else Mary would convince her that a mutual appreciation for ketchup on their chips was hardly the basis for a lifelong connection. These infatuations passed quickly and harmlessly

The Song came into play for the other ones, the boys that were not as easily disregarded. The first time it was invoked was in second year, when Alice had dated Jonathan Nayar for three months before splitting so disastrously that the second year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs weren’t on speaking terms for nearly a full term. That first night had seen Lily, Mary, Julia, and the other second year Gryffindor girls try desperately to stop Alice’s full body crying as they tried to ply her with sweets, pictures of pretty looking boys, or, in Dorcas’ case, a half-full bottle of firewhiskey whose origin was never discovered.

Nothing worked and the cohort of therapist-hopefuls gradually dwindled until only Mary remained to comfort her lovelorn best friend. Bereft of sweets, pinups, or illicit alcohol, Mary had turned instead to her smuggled record player and the music that she’d grown up with. Decades of musical history passed by, from Elvis to Elton, until - “Play that one again,” Alice said quietly, after the Beatles’  _ Yesterday _ .

The pair sat in silence through the song several times before Alice smiled shakily. “At least I know there’s someone out there sadder than I am,” she said and blew her nose loudly. “Have you started Transfiguration yet?” In the years since, hearing  _ Yesterday  _ playing on Mary’s record player was a sure sign that Alice had, once again, had her heart broken, something that only the combination of Mary and the Beatles had ever been able to cure.

Alice’s eternal optimism and total conviction that her soulmate was out there in the face of years of heartbreak was something totally alien to Lily, who had only ever approached a relationship with the vague sense that they were attractive enough and pleasant to be around. 

After a few minutes, Julia re-emerged from the bathroom. “Thanks for letting me brush my teeth,” she said, “I looked for James to thank him as well, but he wasn’t taking a shower when I was in there.”

“Oh, I think he has Quidditch tryouts,” Lily explained. “He mentioned last night.”

Julia cocked her head. “Were you two working on homework together?”

Lily nodded. “Yeah, he’s been helping me with that project that Flitwick assigned me last week.”

“I didn’t know Flitwick was in on it,” Julia said serenely, “I’ll let Alice know that we have allies.”

“What?”

Julia just smiled and tucked her toothbrush carefully into her bookbag before leaving for the Great Hall.

* * *

A couple of wide-awake hours later, Lily walked into her Arithmancy class, performing the traditional “first class of the year” ritual of scoping out the competition. There were a couple of Slytherins in the far corner, the token Ravenclaws in the front row, and, somewhat surprisingly, two or three Hufflepuffs filling in the gaps. Lily smiled when she saw a familiar face – Remus Lupin - sitting alone. She hurried over to him and dropped her bags off in the seat next to his.

“Morning, Remus!”

He turned towards her, his eyes half drooping with sleep. “Morning,” he yawned, “Ready for another year of this, then?”

“Won’t be that bad, everyone who had to take it to get the O.W.L. is gone, so it’s only the people who actually know what’s going on,” Lily said cheerfully. Remus didn’t really answer. She turned to him to follow up, only to see him nodding off, slouched back against his chair with his chin in his chest.

“What's up with you, then? It's just the second day back, you can't possibly be behind on sleep already. Even I got a full night's rest,” Lily chided. It wasn’t strictly true, she’d just been woken up early by Julia and hadn’t been able to justify going back to bed afterwards.

Remus scowled. “Couldn't sleep.”

“Well, that much was obvious. You look about ready to nod off. You get sick a lot, but this is the second day of class!”

A shrug. “Dorm-mates made it hard to sleep.”

Lily tutted sympathetically. “That makes sense. It must be hard living with the Marauders.”

“Excuse me!” Remus replied indignantly, “There is nothing wrong with the Marauders. 'Sides,” he yawned, “Aren't you living with one of our number now too?”

Lily laughed. “Well, you've got me there. Can't say he keeps me up at night, though. He's a lot quieter than I'd have thought one of you lot could be.”

“Big misconception really,” Remus admitted. “We Marauders really value our sleep. James and Sirius need to get a minimum of eight hours a night and Peter and I are pretty quiet anyway.”

“Right. Except for last night, then.”

“Come again?”

“You just said that one of them kept you up all night, didn't you?”

“He... Well, he didn't do it on purpose?”

Lily frowned. “Are you being intentionally obtuse, or are you just tired?”

Remus sighed. “Just tired, Lily. I'll, uh- I'll explain later.”

Lily shrugged. She'd have pursued the topic, but Professor Abscissa walked through the door, and she'd spent far too many classes already underneath the _ muffliato _ and wasn't eager to turn slacking off into a habit. Besides, Remus was a good student, and she'd hate to distract him, especially when he was already so worn out; Arithmancy was a difficult enough class already without distracting conversations and sleep deprivation wearing away at one's concentration.

Still, she was curious as to what had happened to her friend. Remus was sickly, she knew that; he was ill, or was visiting sick relatives, with alarming frequency. However, he never tried to hide any of his illnesses, answering readily about whatever malady was befalling him at the time. Had Remus just said that he felt sick, or that he was under the weather, she'd have accepted that and moved on. The fact that he'd first blamed one of his dorm-mates on his lack of sleep and then not answered any further questions about it made Lily curious, and a curious Lily was a Lily who got answers.

And so she sat, split between her desire to learn about what had kept Remus up all night and her desire to not fail Arithmancy. She managed to curb her non-academic curiosity enough to take notes that, while not up to her normal diligent standard, would be enough to get her through the night's homework. The bell rang, and Professor Abscissa closed her book with a sharp crack. “That's it for today then, class,” she said, in her typical brusque fashion, “I'll see you all again next week. Homework is on the board.” She waved her wand lazily, and the assignment slowly appeared in bright white letters on the chalkboard. Lily copied it down as quickly as she could, but when she turned to resume the interrogation of her friend, he'd disappeared.

“Blast,” she muttered, hurrying out of the classroom to see where Remus had gone to.

She caught up to him just a couple of minutes later. “Remus!” she called across the hall, walking briskly to fall in step with him.

“Bugger,” he said under his breath, “How do people keep doing that?”

“Come again?”

“Nothing.”

“Remus...”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Fine. I was trying to avoid you so you wouldn't ask any more questions, but you caught up to me in a fashion not unlike the way somebody I was trying to avoid yesterday caught up to me.” He paused thoughtfully for a second. “Maybe I should take up jogging. I'd get a bit more distance that way.”

Lily stopped walking, taken aback at his candor. “Merlin, Remus, I'm sorry about that. I didn't think- I don't mean to pry.”

He sighed. “It's... It's not really that. I just don't know how to talk about it right now.”

“You're not making much sense, Remus.”

“It's- It's not really a conversation for the hallways of Hogwarts. Can we leave it at that for now?”

Ah. That made a little bit more sense. As much as Lily loved her school, it wasn't really a place where secrets were easily kept; the curse of living at school was that gossip spread like Fiendfyre: quickly, virulently, and once it took hold, it was impossible to get rid of. So this was something that Remus didn't want spread. She could respect that.

“Gotcha,” she said, tapping one finger against the side of her nose, “If you want to talk about it though, you know where to find me.”

“Right,” Remus smiled wearily, “You're a good friend, Lily.”

She grinned. “'Course I am. Don't keep me too curious for too long though, or I'll have to resort to the kind of magic that we're not supposed to know to get the information out of you.”

He chuckled. “You know, I think as Head Girl, you're not really supposed to be making threats like that.”

“Oh please, as if you'd turn me in,” she scoffed.

“You have a point,” conceded Remus.

“Well, I am always right,” Lily said. “Let me know when you want to talk, okay? I've got to be off, free periods and homework and all that, yeah?”

“I'll let you know,” Remus promised.

As Lily turned and walked away, heading off towards the library to get a head start on the set of Arithmancy problems she'd been set, Remus sighed. It was one thing to harbor secret desires for your best friend, it was another thing entirely to admit it, out loud, to somebody else. Somehow, the prospect of talking about it made the whole dilemma seem more real, more problematic, more pressing. As much as he recognized its importance, he was not looking forward to his impending conversation with Lily.

* * *

As Lily headed out of class and towards the library, she realized that she didn’t have the assignment that she’d planned on working on during her first period - her Defense Against the Dark Arts essay was on the table of her common room where she’d left it the night before. Luckily, her new rooms were closer to the library and to the Arithmancy classroom than Gryffindor tower - never let it be said that being Head Girl didn’t come with its perks.

She quickly made her way back to the statue of Grendel and stepped into her common room, where she was immediately greeted with the sight of a shirtless James Potter, looking out the window at the grounds below as he towelled off his hair. 

The sunlight streaming into the room had a rather lovely effect, haloing his pale shoulders and sparkling where it caught the errant drops of water that his towel hadn’t. Suddenly struck by how long she’d been watching and the fact that he’d clearly not heard her come in, Lily loudly cleared her throat, the sound magnified by the silence of the room. He turned with a start, his face and chest flushing red. 

“Sorry about that,” Lily stammered, turning around to face the door she’d just walked through, “I just wanted to grab my Defense stuff.”

“My fault,” James said, quickly, “I wasn’t expecting you to come in. You can look up again; I’m decent.”

Face still hot, she turned back around.

“Why are showering in the middle of the day? Did you cut Arithmancy? Are you even taking that class?”

James shrugged. “Technically, I guess. Try-outs went a little late and I wanted a shower.” He yawned, long and hard. “And I’m pretty tired.”

“Well that’s your own fault, isn’t it? You’re the one that wakes everyone up for 6 o’clock practice; Dorcas complains about it all the time.” Lily shivered, “That’s so early, honestly, I don’t know how you lot do it.”

James rolled his eyes. “It’s not that early. And besides, there’s a real reason for the early practices. We can’t practice during class hours and Henry’s pretty scared of the dark, so we’ve been practicing in the morning since I started.”

“Henry - the fifth year? He plays - what was it, Beater?”

James nodded. “That’s the one. I’m impressed - you do pay attention.”

“Hey! I go sometimes, to support Dorcas. Anyway, I’m surprised that he asked for a favor like that.”

“He didn’t, I saw that he “got sick” a lot during the winter when it got dark out early.”

“Huh. Why don’t you just tell the team? I’m sure they’d understand and they’d stop calling you a task-master behind your back.”

“Nah, I couldn’t do that to Henry. He has a reputation to maintain, you know? I think he’s trying to impress Catherine.”

Lily shook her head. “Boys. Anyway, I’m off to the library. Hope your tryouts went well!” She scooped her DADA book and her half-finished essay off of the table and set out, leaving a still faintly blushing James behind.

* * *

Lily walked into the library and looked around without too much hope. Her conversation with James meant that she was arriving a few minutes after the start of the period, which usually meant that there would be no tables available, unless you had a friend saving a seat. Normally, that wouldn’t have been a problem; in years past, she'd spend her free periods with her friends, either studying for an upcoming class or else trying to persuade Alice to not go through with whatever hair brained scheme she had in mind at the time. Unfortunately, she was the only girl in her year who'd opted out of the Divination N.E.W.T. As was standard in times of political turmoil, Divination had become one of the most popular classes offered; many were under the impression that it could provide some insight into the future of the Wizarding World, and more importantly, offer some guidance as to how to survive the impending conflict.

Lily was not as convinced of the subject's efficacy, and had deigned to pursue the subject further, despite the EE that she'd received on her O.W.L., which left her as the only girl in her year who wasn't enrolled in the course. She rather suspected that Mary was only pursuing the “mystical and powerful art of Divination” to appease Alice, who had insisted that it was the most important subject that they could take, given the circumstances, but she had no confirmation on that one way or another.

And so it came as no surprise to Lily Evans that when she walked through the double doors to the Hogwarts Library, it was, for the most part, utterly void of anyone she knew. Her eyes swept the room once, twice, before they found a familiar face, one that she'd missed the first time around. She quickly crossed the library, putting her books down with a gentle “thud.”

“Hi Melanie,” Lily whispered, “Mind if I sit down? All my friends are in Divination, and I prefer to have company if I'm trying to get work done.”

Melanie looked up, startled, eyes wide. “Oh,” she squeaked, “No. Not at all.”

“Brill,” the older girl beamed, “Scoot over a bit, then.”

Melanie obliged, moving her chair over to allow Lily space to sit, before turning back to her book, burying her nose in Standard Book of Spells Grade 2 . Lily set to work herself, finishing an essay on how to recognize and treat different kinds of magical burns.

The pair worked in silence for a little over an hour, during which Lily managed to finish the essay and complete a grand total of one half of one of the six problems that she'd been set for Arithmancy. It was eventually Melanie who broke the silence by groaning loudly and burying her face in the desk. Lily glanced around the room, but no one seemed to have heard the short outburst. “What's wrong?” she asked quietly.

Melanie's head popped of her desk. “Sorry,” she said quickly, “I forgot you were there.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Well, I'm glad my presence can scare you into submission. What's wrong?”

The blonde just glowered balefully at her textbook. “It's this stupid subject. I'm reading through this book and I don't understand any of it.”

“Any of it? What do you mean?”

Melanie groaned. “I don't understand any of it. The descriptions of the charms make no sense, but I can't test them out to see what they do, because that'd be dangerous, and besides, it's not like I'd be able to do them even if I wanted to.” She frowned. “How long until I can drop Charms?”

“Not until after Fifth-Year. Would you really drop it, though? I don't know anyone who's dropped Charms.”

“Oh, I don't know. I guess not. I just can't see myself ever voluntarily doing more charms.” 

“Fair enough. What's your favorite subject, then?”

Melanie looked around carefully to see if anyone was listening in, before admitting, “Care of Magical Creatures. Don't tell anyone though, it's not a 'respectable' class, my dad says.”

Lily grinned. “Don't worry about it. Your secret's safe with me.”

Melanie smiled. “Thanks.” 

“Not a problem. That's what the Head Girl's for, isn't it? Solving your problems and keeping your secrets safe?”

Melanie rolled her eyes. “If you were solving all my problems, you'd make me good at Charms, and tell my dad that working with unicorns is perfectly respectable.”

Melanie's statements were met with chuckles from the Head Girl. “I don't know about that second one,” she admitted, “But if you'd like, I could tutor you in Charms. We both seem to have this period free, and it'd be easy enough to find somewhere to practice.”

“N- No! No, that's okay, I don't want to make you do that, I don't want to be a bother!” Melanie stammered, taken aback by the offer.

“Really, if it was too much trouble, I wouldn't be offering.”

“Well,” Melanie said uncertainly, “If you're sure?”

“Course I am. I'll see you next week, same time, same place? I've gotta run now, I'm off to lunch.”

“Okay. Next week!”

Lily grinned at the shorter girl as she gathered up her books, stuffing the rather miserable progress of her Arithmancy work into her bag before leaving the library.

* * *

The first thing Lily noticed upon arriving in the Great Hall for lunch was that Remus was apparently still utterly exhausted, if the fact that he was asleep in his plate of chips was any indication. From the looks of things, Sirius and Peter were trying to see how many loaves of bread they could stack on their dozing friend's head; the tower currently stood six high. James, meanwhile, was doing his best to look disinterested, even disapproving of the whole thing, but his excitement was obvious when the seventh loaf of bread teetered slightly before settling into place.

So intently was Lily watching the group of boys that she barely registered when her friends sat down, hearing, but not listening to the last snippets of their conversation. “-And then she said that I have a secret admirer! Me! Isn't that romantic? I hope he's cute.”

Mary answered in a typically sardonic fashion. “Alice, you think all boys are cute while you're snogging them. It's only after that they develop buck teeth or acne or a gut.”

Alice stuck her tongue out. “At least I get boys to kiss me,” she retorted. Well, at least she was feeling better, it seemed.

Julia, meanwhile, was paying less attention to the subject of boys, and more to what Lily was looking at. “I noticed that too,” she said dreamily. “It's not really his time of month, is it?”

The absurdity of the statement took a couple of seconds to reach Lily's brain, but once it did, she snorted with laughter. “Julia. Guys don't have cycles. He has no 'time of month.'”

Julia shook her head. “I know that. Daddy explained it to me. It's just that he gets sick, Remus, I mean, at the same time every month.” She turned to Lily, cocking her head to the left, before continuing. “Haven't you noticed? He leaves for a couple of days, and comes back looking sick and weak. Maybe he's secretly a girl,” she mused, “Or maybe the Monthly Red Cap made a mistake because of his hair. Maybe if he cut it, he'd stop getting sick so often.”

And with that, Julia was back in her own world, somehow having interpreted the “Monthly Red Cap” that parents used to explain that 'time of the month' to their children literally, and was trying to devise the most elegant solution she could to save Remus from his case of mistaken identity.

Lily was similarly lost in thought, her mind tracing through the implications of what Julia had just revealed. She thought back as far as she could and yes, it fit, just as she'd thought it would. Julia's observations could be counted on to be both seemingly random, but also made with pin-point accuracy, and this time was no exception. When she thought about it, Remus had gotten ill with regularity once a month for as long as she'd known him. He'd always just chalked it up to a sickly disposition, a statement that was corroborated by his teachers, his family, and the Hospital Wing, and so nobody had ever really questioned it. What was more puzzling though, now that she thought about it, was that he always seemed to know when he'd be unwell before hand. He was careful to schedule things around his absences, shifting study sessions, trading patrol duties, asking for extensions on essays, making sure that nothing interfered with whatever was afflicting him so regularly.

What did it mean? She came to two conclusions. First, Remus was ill. She found it highly unlikely that he was secretly a woman, or that the Monthly Red Cap had, in fact, mistaken his identity, and she had no reason to disbelieve the mountain of evidence in front of her that pointed to his being chronically unwell. Secondly, whatever it was that was affecting him was something that was either serious enough that he didn't want to burden her with it, or else only an inconvenience, and didn't feel the need to let her know.

Lily quickly ran through the list of all of the chronic periodic illnesses, magical or muggle, that she could think of, and came up with a sadly short list. Other than two or three magical afflictions that she'd only heard of in passing in DADA the year before, nothing came to mind. Casting one more look at the sleeping boy, she, with a considerable amount of effort, pushed the dilemma to the back of her mind, resolving to figure it out later, with the aid of the library.

* * *

Herbology was uneventful. Or, rather, it was as uneventful as a N.E.W.T. level Herbology class can be, which isn't very. Two students suffered rather nasty looking acid burns from a shiny looking leaf that attacked with what seemed to be a mind of its own, and there was a concerted flurry of panic when Peter (“It was an accident, Professor, I swear!”) knocked over a pot that formerly housed a pair of mandrakes.

At least, Lily mused, no one had gotten _ seriously _ injured, which was something you could say less often than you'd wish at Hogwarts. 

In fact, the lesson had been useful for two reasons. First, Lily had learned that if Professor Molukka says that a plant should only be handled with dragon-hide gloves on, he really meant it. Second, the level of concentration needed to escape the greenhouse without injury had meant that she'd had no spare time to worry about Remus.

It wasn't until she had eaten dinner and returned to her common room to get a start on homework before Astronomy that she remembered her sick friend at all. It was not an example of her best timing. Arithmancy was really quite difficult enough without distractions, and for Lily, the prospect of an ailing friend was one of the worst distractions possible.

It was an hour later that she threw her Arithmancy text across the table with a groan; she wasn't getting anywhere. Total time spent on Arithmancy: nearly two hours. Total amount of Arithmancy completed: one problem out of six. This was ridiculous. Lily rummaged through her bag for the notes she'd taken during class, hoping to stumble upon some piece of wisdom that she'd been missing for the last hour.

She didn't find any such tidbit of information. What she did find was the letter she'd written to Narcissa the week before but hadn't yet had a chance to send. Reasoning that she was getting nowhere with Arithmancy, Lily decided to head to the Owlery to distract herself with a nice bout of letter sending productivity. Clutching the note in one hand, she happily left behind the world of numbers and figures and headed out the dormitory and up the spiral staircases to the Owlery.

Glancing out a window, Lily noted that it was quickly darkening. By the looks of things, the sun had just recently set, which gave her about an hour before she had to be at Astronomy. She relaxed, letting herself slow down. It wasn't as late as she'd thought it was; time passes much more slowly when you're doing homework.

Upon reaching the Owlery, she was met with an unexpected sight. Regulus Black wasn't like how House stereotypes dictated he should be. He was quiet, he was well-spoken, he didn't participate in any of the forms of bullying that some of the more prominent members of his house did. He did, however, also exhibit some decidedly Slytherin-esque traits. Foremost among them was his lack of outward emotion; Regulus worked to actively suppress all visible symptoms of emotions.

This stone-facedness was what made the sight that greeted Lily all the more strange. Regulus Black, the boy known (or not known) for being quiet, for being reserved, for his dignity, was crying. He was sitting underneath a window, a folded piece of parchment clutched tightly in one hand while tears flowed freely from his eyes.

Lily walked towards him quickly and knelt to the ground beside him. She'd never really talked with Regulus before but she wasn't the type to let anybody sit alone while they were clearly distressed, no matter how close they felt.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, reaching one hand out to rest on his shoulder.

He jumped at the contact, his face whipping up to meet her gaze as he quickly wiped at his eyes. “Where did you come from? Who sent you?”

“I just came up to send a letter. Are you okay?”

His eyes were wide, and they focused on Lily's face. “You're Lily Evans. You're the Head Girl.”

“Yes,” she confirmed, “That's me. Again, are you okay?”

“Did Dumbledore send you? Does he know about this?” Regulus almost sounded hopeful in a sick, desperate way.

Lily frowned. “Dumbledore hasn't said anything to me about anything. Is there something that he should have told me about?”

“Forget it,” Regulus said quietly, “It doesn't matter. Thank you for your concern, but I'm fine. Just distressing news from home. Don't tell Sirius. He'd worry unnecessarily; it's nothing I can't work out.” And with that, he stood up and walked around Lily and out the Owlery.

Lily stared at him as he walked out, unsure of how to proceed. Her gut told her to run after him and demand that she let him know what was going on, but she had no right to interfere in family business. She wasn't even particularly close to any of the Blacks other than Narcissa, and she wasn't even at Hogwarts anymore.

In the end, she decided that between Remus and Arithmancy, she had more than enough on her plate for the moment. Besides, Regulus had mentioned Dumbledore, and if something was seriously the matter, the Headmaster would let her know if he needed her help. In all the years she'd known him, she'd questioned his judgement only once, and even that single time didn't seem as valid as it had at the moment; James wasn't as awful of a Head Boy as she'd thought he would be.

And so, Lily selected a tawny barn owl from the rafters, calling him to her with a soft whistle. She tied the letter to the bird's leg, rubbing his head affectionately and whispering, “Narcissa Black. She might be near Lucius Malfoy, if that helps any” before watching the messenger fly into the night, hooting softly as it did.

Having completed her task, she returned to her dormitory to pick up her things and headed off for Astronomy. She made her way to the highest tower and happily greeted Julia. “Hi! Where're Mary and Alice?”

Julia shook her head. “Alice said it was too late to have class, so she decided that she didn't want to do Astronomy anymore.”

Lily snickered. “Sounds like Alice. Mary just went along with it?”

Julia nodded. “She said that she didn't feel right about Alice being alone in the dormitory.”

Lily's attention was caught by the arrival of the rest of the class. Lily noted with some consternation that Remus looked even worse than he did before, barely responding to the jokes being thrown around by the other Marauders.

“Julia,” she whispered to her friend, “You said that it was the 'wrong time of the month' for Remus to be sick, right?”

“Yes,” she replied, “He was sick three weeks ago. He shouldn't be sick again for a little while at least.”

“Three weeks? How did you know that? We weren't at school three weeks ago.”

“James' parents came to my house,” Julia said matter-of-factly, as if that was adequate explanation.

“Er. Right. And?”

“And what?”

“James' parents came to your house. And that means what in terms of Remus being sick?”

“James' parents come to visit daddy once a month and it’s always at the same time of the month that Remus is sick.”

Lily blinked. “Julia, I'm sure that's just a coincidence.”

“If you say so, Lily.”

Lily was about to respond, but her attention was called to the beginning of the lesson. Professor Albedo instructed them to follow her lead, observing the moon and filling in its stages.

Lily dutifully obeyed; Astronomy wasn't necessarily difficult; it was more mind-numbing than anything else. The danger wasn't of miscasting a spell, but of falling asleep before finishing ones’ charts.

Full moon. Waning gibbous. Waning crescent. New moon. Waxing crescent. Waxing gibbous. Full moon. Rinse. Repeat.

It was tedious work, but it was a subject that Lily found interesting. While she was growing up, she'd been fascinated by the space race, and the reaches of space still held a certain fascination over her.

It wasn't until she'd been running over the charts for nearly forty five minutes in almost complete silence that the link hit her. She scanned over her chart again once, twice, to see if she'd made a mistake, but it didn't look like she had. Her heart thundered in her chest as she leaned over to ask Julia to verify her realization.

“Julia,” she whispered, “What day exactly did Remus last get sick?”

Julia thought about it for a second before responding. “August 14th. Daddy was sad because it was a week before Mummy’s birthday.”

Lily's heart skipped a beat. “So. That was the last full moon, then?”

Julia scanned her chart quickly. “Yes!”

“And then he'll be sick again... Second Tuesday from now?”

Julia nodded. “That sounds right.”

The dates matched up, and Lily had found her first hypothesis. Looking at the information that she had in front of her, it was hard to find a strong counter-argument.

Remus Lupin was a werewolf.


	5. I've Just Seen a Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't write this in time for @starsailor to look at it, so any errors are one hundred percent my fault. Not that they generally aren't, but moreso now.

**Thursday, September 15, 1977**

Sunlight streamed in through the curtainless window in a small flat in Diagon Alley. Narcissa blinked at the sudden assault of her eyelids before opening her eyes completely. She scanned the room for her boyfriend, but he wasn't to be found. “Lucius?” she called, but there was no response. She decided to just snuggle back up underneath the covers and wait for his return – he'd probably just popped out for a coffee or something. She smiled contentedly. She was, in this moment, in heaven. She rubbed her belly absentmindedly in anticipation of her news: she was pregnant, had found out the night before, but hadn't had the opportunity yet to let Lucius know. 

The door rattled and her heart surged. He was back. “Cissa?” she heard his voice cry out. “It's nearly seven, are you awake?”

“I'm awake!” she called back. “Where'd you go? Come back to bed. I miss you.”

She heard the tap of his feet as he made his way to the bedroom (their bedroom!) and gently opened the door. “Morning,” he said, a warm grin plastered across the angular lines of his face. “Sleep well?”

“Where'd you go? I woke up and didn't know where you'd gone. I thought maybe you'd left me for your other girlfriend,” she teased.

He laughed happily. “I've been found out! How long have you known of my secret affair with those little chocolate croissants from the bakery across the street?” He crossed over and sat on the edge of the bed.

She poked him in the ribs. “It wasn't hard to guess. Usually people are a little more discreet – your affair's starting to show.”

He pouted. “Is it that bad?”

“Oh come off it,” she laughed. “We can be in this together. I have a feeling that I'm going to be blowing up quite large myself.”

Lucius Malfoy's brow furrowed in confusion, before: “You don't mean...”

Her only response was to sit up and kiss her boyfriend soundly on the lips. “You'd better leave that other lady then. It wouldn't be fitting of a Malfoy to leave his pregnant girlfriend all alone, now would it?”

Lucius shook his head, breaking himself out of his reverie. “You- When did you find out? I mean-” He paused. “No, that's not right. That's not the question I wanted to ask.”

This time it was Narcissa who looked confused as Lucius rummaged around in the pockets of his cloak for a few moments, muttering fiendishly about goblins and how they “gave him the willies” before pulling a small box out of his inside breast pocket.

“Narcissa-” he started, opening the box to reveal a delicately wrought white-gold ring showcasing a small emerald, “I know that I've only known you for a little-”

Lucius Malfoy never got to finish his proposal. After all, asking somebody to marry you is rather difficult when that someone in particular is attached, rather enthusiastically, to your lips.

* * *

Peter Pettigrew scratched absentmindedly at his chin with the tip of his quill, oblivious to the fact that he was staining his face midnight blue.  _ Owl Mother _ , he eventually wrote, _ v. important we reassure her that classes are going well. Don't want her to worry. _

He glanced idly around the room, his eyes eventually falling (as they tended to do) on Julia.

_ Also: Saito looks v. good in blue. Not Ravenclaw blue, but lighter - sky blue? Remember, in case opportunity arises to buy her a gift. _

Keeping notes like these was a habit that Peter had had for as long as he could remember. Being a single mother in the Wizarding World was difficult, but Ms. Pettigrew handled it with aplomb, something that she attributed to good organisation. Although they didn’t much resemble each other, Peter with his mousy brown hair and squashed face, and Ms. Pettigrew willowy and blonde, she often joked that she knew Peter was her son for the notes and lists that he kept.

Those notes had been a source of mockery at Hogwarts, as any peculiarity among schoolchildren is wont to be. Sirius in particular had derived great pleasure from filching Peter's books and reading them out loud in full dramatic fashion. This continued for several weeks into the Marauder's collective friendship until Sirius realized that Peter wasn't perturbed by his antics and that the smaller boy would continue to write notes to himself no matter how much he was teased for them. And so Peter's notes were left alone and Sirius found other things to tease Peter about.

_ Purchase Love Potion to get Sirius back for the loo incident. Make him moony over that one fifth year Hufflepuff that he keeps telling to get a “haircut and a new face.” _

* * *

There was a long list of things that Regulus would like to do over and above speaking with his mother about his future as a member of the Black family. However, the world wasn't always entirely kind, and so there Regulus sat, alone in his dorm room while the rest of his House was at breakfast, speaking to his mother via the Floo Network.

It wasn't anything that he hadn't heard before, but there was an urgency in her tone that gave Regulus pause. His mother was also far more lucid than she had been the last time they'd talked, but a lucid Mrs. Black was somehow far more terrifying than a deranged one.

“Regulus,” she warned, “This isn't some hypothetical; the Blacks have their sources, and Voldemort is gaining power.”

“Mother,” Regulus replied testily, “I still don't see how you make the logical jump from 'Xenophilius Lovegood was fired from the Prophet' to 'Regulus needs to be prepared to enlist in muggle-born genocide.”

“Listen!” she snapped, “It's not about the logical jump. If nothing comes of it, fine, all the better for you. You can live with a clear conscience; I'm telling you to be prepared, because this _ is _ happening.”

“What is it that you wanted from me again?”

“You know your brother,” Mrs. Black said quietly, “He'd never sign up. Ever. He'd die first. Your uncle has it on good authority that Voldemort's going to ask just that – he wants pure-blood volunteers from each family.”

“Right. And?”

“Sirius would never join. He's chosen his own path. If Voldemort does try to recruit, you need to take his place.”

Regulus' face was stony. “And how do you figure that?”

“You've heard the stories!” Mrs. Black hissed, “You know what he'll do if we refuse! He'll kill the family if we try to work against him.”

Regulus' hand floated towards his cheek where one finger began to trace where once there had been a gash. “Forgive me, mother,” he said quietly, “For not being convinced that I have to join Voldemort to protect you.”

She looked mournful, an emotion that was entirely out of place on a Black visage. “I haven't been a good mother, Regulus. I realize that. Not to you or to Sirius. But I'm trying to change that.”

“You're asking me to abolish my moral code and to join up with a murderer, _ mother _ .”

“Sirius made his choice. I'm just trying to support that.”

“Yes, by completely disregarding my choices.”

“I'm not- You know how Sirius is. You know how he is.”

“So what you're telling me is that his choices are more important than mine are?”

Mrs. Black gaped. “No! Regulus, no, listen, it's not about that. It's about preserving what we can of our family, of trying to do what's best for everyone.”

“No,” Regulus snapped, “It's about what's best for Sirius. I've been thinking these last couple of days about what it is that I want, and it's not this.”

“Reg-”

“I have my own life, mother. I'm not some servant that will jump when you snap your fingers.”

“Just listen to me, Regulus! Please!”

It was too late. The youngest Black had already gotten to his feet and was preparing to extinguish the fire, a snarl clouding his otherwise handsome features.

“Please, Regulus. Do it for your broth-”

He snuffed the fire out with an angry twitch of his wand. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Sirius was the older brother, the unapproachable, unassailable brother who had done nothing but forge his own path. He wasn’t supposed to need Regulus’ help. They barely spoke any more - Sirius saw Regulus’ staying at home as complicity in the family’s politics and not for the attempt at peace-keeping that it really was, while Regulus saw Sirius’ trailblazing as nothing but selfish idealism - but Sirius was still the older brother. It wasn’t fair that he was the one who needed Regulus.

But especially unfair was that, in time, Sirius would owe his younger brother a debt that he would never know he owed. 

* * *

_ Knock knock knock _ . A set of sharp raps at the door to her rooms made Lily look up from the Transfiguration work that she had strewn across her common room’s table. “Mary?” she asked in surprise when she saw her visitor.

“Can I come in?” Mary asked, holding up her books, “Alice and Julia aren’t in Runes, and they’re being extra Alice-and-Julia tonight. I wanted to get at least a little bit done before dinner.”

“Of course,” Lily said, “Let me just put some of these things away.” She tried to stack some of the papers that had somehow managed, like a gas, to fill all the space available to them. 

“Don’t put yourself out, it’s mostly just reading.”

Lily dropped the papers back onto the table in relief. “Thanks. Sorry I’m such a mess right now; classes are running me ragged.”

Mary let out a snort. “Of course they are, you’re taking what, ten courses?”

“What, magic is real and I’m supposed to not try to learn as much about it as I can?” Lily asked, scandalized. “I’d take more, but Alchemy isn’t offered this year and Curse-Breaking conflicts with Charms.” She sighed and sank back into the couch. “It’s a whole new world that I didn’t know existed until only a few years ago and there’s so much to learn.”

“You can have it,” Mary groused, “If McGonagall tells me one more time that my armchair is mauve and not fuschia, I’m going to lose it. I bet I’d love driving automobiles.”

Lily laughed. “What is it with wizards and cars? Potter can’t pronounce ‘internal combustion’ but he’s mad for wheels. He saw a picture of a Porsche in one of my magazines and wouldn’t shut about it for a couple of days.”

“Can’t blame him,” Mary said, “But hey, you and James have been getting along well, then? Is that awkward?”

“What, because he used to fight with Sev? That’s ancient history, Mary.”

“No, I meant because he’s fancied you for years. But the Severus thing too, I suppose.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “You don’t actually believe that he meant all that, do you?”

“What do you mean? He asked you out at least once a week for years, Lily.” Mary turned to Lily, the reading that she’d used as a pretext for this conversation all but forgotten.

“He just liked the attention,” Lily scoffed, “It wasn’t about me, it was about making a spectacle about the whole thing.”

Mary shrugged. “Maybe he thought it was romantic.”

“What’s romantic about being put on the spot in front of the whole school? Or about that weird flower arrangement from fourth year?”

“That one was a little off-putting,” Mary mused.

“Exactly! That’s just not what people do when they’re interested in someone.”

“So you don’t think James ever actually fancied you? What about now? You’re getting on well with him, do you think there’s a-”

“Honestly, enough about me and Potter,” Lily cut in, “There’s really nothing to tell. As long as he’s not putting me on the spot in public, I think we can manage as friends. Why are you so curious? Boys on your mind?” 

Mary rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately, my love life is the same as it’s always been. I think Alice has enough boys for you, me, and her combined.” She looked around conspiratorially before leaning in. “But just between you and me, I think Julia has someone she’s seeing on the sly.”

Lily chuckled. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Now didn’t you have reading to do when you came in? I want to get some of this done before dinner.”

* * *

_ Do _ not _ understand Switching Spells for human targets – ask Sirius or James about them later on. Actually, ask James instead. If all goes well, Sirius will not be pleased with me over the next few days. _

* * *

Sirius sat quietly on his bed, one arm resting on drawn up knees. He fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with a quiet incantation before taking a long drag.

“Oi,” said the boy across him. “I thought we agreed to quit.”

“Nah,” Sirius responded, “Only around people who'd narc, wasn't it?”

James frowned but waved his hand in defeat. “It'd kind of go against the whole reason I quit to go inform the Head Girl then, wouldn't it?”

Sirius chuckled. “It would, at that. You have to prove to Evans that you were all squeaky-clean, don't you? How's that going?”

James groaned and flopped over backwards, pulling Peter's pillow over his face. “Fine. Excellent. It's brilliant, Padfoot.”

“Right, which is why you're here complaining to me instead of being out there winning her heart,” Sirius remarked with a sage nod. “Reverse psychology, Prongsy, I like it. You don’t go begging for it. Anymore.”

Sirius earned a fierce glare for that one, although it was sustained for only the few seconds that James felt inclined to lift his head up off of the bed.

“Shut it,” came the eventual reply.

Sirius rolled his eyes. “But really, Prongs, I mean, I get the whole 'maturity' thing, but you two seem to be friendly enough, she can't stop talking to you in classes and I know you’re spending nights with her. Why not just ask her out?”

Silence filled the room. Sirius sat patiently, sucking on the end of his cigarette as he waited for his best friend to respond. Eventually, James sat up.

“It's like- It's- Okay. You know how up until now, none of us except Moony really knew who Evans was?”

Sirius snorted. “You finally realized that you've been fawning for five years over a girl that you've never managed to hold a decent conversation with? Impressive.”

James scowled. “Stuff it. I mean, I always thought she was this certain kind of person, you know? Studious, really careful about rules, really careful in general, uptight.” 

Sirius nodded. “Right. And she's not like that?”

“Not at all.”

“And?”

James frowned. “And what?”

“And how does that make you feel, Prongsy?” Sirius asked with a grin. “That Evans doesn't quite match the girl you made up in your head?”

The Head Boy scratched at the nape of his neck thoughtfully. “It's- It's strange.”

Sirius nodded. “Eloquent. And helpful. Definitely helpful.”

“Asshole.”

“Look, do you want to talk about it or don't you? Only that I'd be perfectly fine just smoking, but you seem to want to talk about Evans.”

“I just-”

“Do you still like her or not? We can start simple.”

James didn't even have to think about it. “Yes.”

Sirius frowned as his cigarette shortened to filter. He stubbed it out on the bed post before flicking it out the open window. “Right. So she's different than how you pictured her, but that's okay because you still like her, but you can't ask her out because...?”

“It's...” James scratched at the nape of his neck for a couple of seconds, struggling to pull together the right words to make his best friend understand. “It's like, if I ask her out now and get rejected again, it'd be by the real Evans, and that'd make it final. Before, I knew that I didn't know her and that she didn't know me, so being rejected didn't mean anything, but now it would. Does that make sense?” 

Sirius nodded. “So what's the plan, then?”

“Be her mate, I guess? Or, at least, be her mate until I can convince her that I'm not a total prat and that she should go out with me.”

Sirius grinned happily. “That sounds more the Prongs I know and love.”

James rolled his eyes. “Don't go all sappy on me here, mate.”

“No, really, you sound much better. I'd ask you if you wanted to go replace Filch's liquid soap with paint, but I promised Moons that I'd be good.”

James thought for a few seconds. “Well, I don’t think it would be mature and Head-Boy-ish to do something like that.”

Sirius could sense that there was a “but” coming. That was good. Fantastic, even. Sirius rather lived for “but”s. 

“But I don’t think it would be terribly wrong if I were to stand guard with the map while my very best friend borrowed some cleaning supplies from our beloved caretaker, would it?”

“Positively saintly, actually,” Sirius said with a grin, “Friendship is such a cornerstone of modern society.”

* * *

_ Tap. Tap tap tap.  _

“Cissa!” Lucius called out, “You’ve got an owl.”

“Who’s it from?” Narcissa yelled back, her voice muffled by the sound of the shower.

“It’s - who’s Snake-Soul?” Lucius asked, confused. 

“Oh, I’ve been waiting for that!” Narcissa said, excitedly, “It’s Lily Evans - do you remember her?”

Narcissa emerged from the shower a few minutes later, a fluffy white towel wrapped around her. “Where’s my letter?” she asked her fiancé. 

Lucius silently handed the envelope over, thinking hard as Narcissa read Lily’s letter. “Do the two of you speak often?” he asked eventually.

“As often as two busy girls can,” Narcissa said, “Do you have a quill? I want to write back.”

Lucius grimaced. “Look, Narcissa, I think-”

“My full name? If this is serious, let me put some clothes on first.”

Lucius sighed, taking the time that Narcissa spent shrugging on a set of robes to collect his thoughts and go over what it was that he wanted to say.

“So what’s going on?” Narcissa said once she was dressed.

Lucius took a deep breath before responding, “I think you should stop writing to her. Blame me, blame my parents, do whatever you need to, but it’s imperative that when Voldemort rises, our family doesn’t have ties to her.”

“Isn’t this a little rash, Lucius? The Prophet says that it’s as likely as not that he’s caught by Aurors within the month.”

“They’re a propaganda machine, Cissa, you know that. My father has sources that say that he’s planning a move by the end of the year - you’re a Black, I’m sure your family has heard the same.”

Narcissa’s teeth caught her lower lip. “I’ve heard things, but I’m not convinced they add up to needing to cut ties with Lily. Is it really that bad to talk to just one person like her?”

“Lily isn’t just any mudblood, Cissa, she’s Dumbledore’s favorite. You know her better than I do - how likely do you think it is that she doesn’t join his side in a fight? If- if nothing happens, if Voldemort stays where he is, then nothing happens, but Cissa, this is a real possibility. We’re starting a family. We need to keep this one,” he gestured towards her still flat belly, “safe.”

Narcissa’s eyes tightened. “If it happens, if something comes of this, I’ll do it - you’re right. But it’s an if, not a when.”

Lucius grimaced. “I’m not looking forward to it either, Narcissa - blood is important, but violence is ugly. But it’s looking more like a when as time goes on.”

“If, Lucius,” Naricssa said, sharply, “If.”

* * *

“It’s getting late,” Mary said, eventually, closing her book with a satisfying  _ snap _ . “Want to head to dinner?”

“Thanks, but I wanted to find Remus,” Lily said, “I’ve been too caught up with work to have seen him all week and there’s something I wanted to talk about with him.”

Mary thought for a second. “I think he was in the common room when I left. He might still be there, you know how he gets when he’s working.”

“Thanks,” Lily said, “Sorry that you came out here to concentrate and didn’t get much work done.”

“It happens,” Mary said with a shrug, “It was nice to catch up. Hope you find Remus.”

When Lily made it to the Gryffindor Common Room, she was pleased to see that Mary’s intel had been correct. Sitting alone on one of the couches, Remus Lupin was hunched over his Charms book, scowling at the page on the Protean. What’s more, he was all alone - another stroke of luck.

“Hi,” Lily said quietly, sitting down next to him. “Having trouble?”

“I'd ask Prongs- er, James, for help, but I’m not sure where he is right now.” He shrugged. “Peter went down to the kitchens a bit ago, he said he was hungry.”

“But dinner's in ten minutes,” Lily said disapprovingly.

“The house-elves don't mind. Anyway, Peter said that he had some things to do during dinner, some errand or something for his mother.”

Silence filled the room for a minute or so while each party collected their thoughts. “I ought to tell you something,” Remus eventually said, “Can we go somewhere else?”

Lily nodded, and followed Remus to an empty classroom. Lily sat on the teacher's desk, legs crossed beneath her while Remus leaned against one of the smaller ones. He furrowed his brow in thought and tugged nervously at one earlobe. Finally, he spoke. “Lily,” he said, “I- I- there's something I have to tell you. About why I've been sleeping poorly and looking tired.”

Lily nodded. She knew what was coming.

“It's- I'm telling you this because you're my friend, because you won't judge me the way the others will.” Remus was beginning to tear up. He pulled out a chair and sat down, clutching his shaking hands to his chest. “I- I can't have the school knowing, I can't have anybody knowing.”

“Remus, it's okay,” Lily soothed, trying to keep reassure her friend that it was okay, that she wasn't going to tell anybody, that he was safe. “It's okay.”

His whole body was shaking now, his head bent over his knees.

“I know you're a werewolf,” she said, as the whispered words “I'm gay,” left his lips.

They both stared at each other for several moments.

“What?” they both asked.

Lily blinked, and then started her explanation. “I- I noticed that you missed class a lot, and that it was regular, and that it was always on the full moon.” She took a deep breath. “The excuses were always different, but it was always on the full moon that you were gone, and you always look tired and worn for a few days before and after. It was the only explanation that I could come up with.”

Remus looked at her weakly. “You- You haven't told anybody, have you?”

Lily shook her head. “Of course not. I only made the connection yesterday, and I'd never give that kind of information out.”

“Right. Thanks.” He looked about ready to cry. “I- I understand if you don't feel comfortable around me anymore. It's- It's fine.”

Lily gaped. The idea of feeling uncomfortable around Remus hadn't even occurred to her. “I- What?”

“Most people don't feel very safe around people like- people like me.”

“I- No! Remus, no.” Lily got up and crossed to her friend, throwing her bending down slightly to throw her arms around him. “Remus, no. I'm not going anywhere. What kind of a friend would I be if I ditched you because you were... different?”

Remus snorted. “You sound like James. He calls it my 'furry problem.'”

Lily's eyes widened. “Oh, is that what that was? I always just assumed you were hiding a pet or something in your room.”

He shrugged. “But really. You're okay with this? You're not freaked out? You're not afraid I'm going to maul you or kill you in your sleep or something?”

Lily laughed. “Remus, I figure if you wanted to do anything like that, you could have done it years ago. Besides, it's not like my being your friend or not would keep me that much safer, would it?”

“I guess not,” he conceded.

“Right. Now hold on a bit, what did you say earlier? You're gay?”

Remus looked around frantically as he shushed the Head Girl. “Don't say it so loud!”

Lily rolled her eyes. “I _ am _ a witch,” she said, pointing her wand at the door. “ _ Silencio _ . Better?”

Remus nodded. “Right. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just- You're the first person I've told.”

Lily smiled. “I'm honored, Remus.” Her grin turned wicked and she leaned in conspiratorially. “So. D'you have your eyes on anybody in particular, then?”

He groaned and covered his face.

“I take it that's a yes then.”

He nodded weakly.

“You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, Remus. I'll live.”

“No, no, I want to tell you. I have to tell you. I have to tell somebody.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “It's just... Saying it out loud makes it real, y'know?”

She nodded silently, waiting for him to continue.

“It's- It's Sirius. I'm in love with Sirius Black.” The words tumbled out of his mouth and he grimaced. “I'm in love with Sirius Black and I have been for bloody years,” he repeated, closing his eyes and sighing. “Merlin, that feels good to say out loud.”

That was a shock. She'd have believed Peter Pettigrew, maybe Frank Longbottom, but Sirius Black? “Remus,” she started, “He's... I mean... Isn’t he a bit-”

“Yeah,” he said sadly, “I know.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither one wanting to break the silence. It wasn't until Lily's stomach let out an unhappy gurgle that either of the two Gryffindors realized just how late it was. The tension of the moment dissolved and the two burst out laughing. “Shall we to dinner, then?” Lily asked after they had calmed down.

Remus nodded, feeling happy for the first time that day. They'd made it out the door and had started towards the Great Hall when he turned to catch Lily in a tight hug. “Thanks,” he whispered.

Lily smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Don't worry about it, Remus. That's what I'm here for.”

Neither of the two noticed, but if a passerby were to listen very closely, it's quite possible that they'd hear something else. Somebody, invisible in the corridor, on his own way to dinner from Filch’s broom closet, saw the werewolf and the Head Girl and growled.

* * *

_ Love Potion was more expensive than anticipated. Excess taken out of chocolate frog budget. _

* * *

James paced around the kitchen, one hand running angrily through his hair. The two Marauders made an interesting scene: James was a bundle of nervous energy, pacing, muttering, radiating anxiety in waves, while Sirius sat at one of the tables looking almost bored with the whole process, steadily making his way through a truly disgusting stack of potatoes.

“I'm telling you, Padfoot, Moony's encroaching on my girl!”

Sirius snorted. “First off, Prongs, she's not your girl yet. She's barely started talking civilly towards you, and if you hadn't noticed, she's been on speaking terms with Moons since the first term of first year. So if anything, she's probably more his girl than yours. Second, Moons knows that you're creepily obsessed with her, so he wouldn't do that to you. It's not like him to go behind our backs. Third, I can’t believe you kicked Peter out of the kitchens for something this ridiculous. It’s inhuman. You know how much he likes potatoes.”

James levelled a glare at his best friend that would cause any other student in the school (and perhaps a few teachers) to cower, but Sirius just rolled his eyes. “Padfoot, aren't you supposed to be on my side here?”

“I'm saying that you don't need to have a side, here, Prongs. Moons isn't doing anything with Evans; you know they're friends. She was probably just helping him with Charms or something like that. Anyway, I thought we'd agreed that Moons was about as sexual as a grindylow.”

James groaned. “Padfoot, have you been paying attention at all? Have you seen the way Moony acts? He's in love. Trust me. I know the symptoms.” He gestured helplessly at his own chest.

“Oh, is that what it is?” Sirius shrugged, “I just figured that the two of you had too much starch in your pants or something.”

“Not helping, Padfoot.”

Sirius rolled his eyes again (he could just hear his mother now: “Sirius Black, if you keep making faces, I'll charm it to stick!”) “Tell you what, Prongsy, I'll ask him about it, if it'll make you stop whining. Sound good?”

James stopped pacing, as if the thought that Sirius could actually talk to Remus instead of attempting to Divine his thoughts was a revelation. “Yeah. Yeah, it does. Thanks, mate.”

“Don't mention it. Really, don't. I want to eat at least four more baked potatoes and your feelings are nauseating.”

* * *

Melanie Greengrass lay awake, mulling over the state of her life. Lily Evans, Head Girl, had offered to tutor her, Melanie Greengrass, Second Year Slytherin, personally in Charms. Were the situation any different, she'd have jumped at the opportunity. After all, when Narcissa had left, she'd lost her older-sister-role-model figure in the castle, and Lily seemed a perfect fit for that role.

Of course, she wasn't sure if the offer would be quite as attractive were she not so lonely. She felt utterly out of place in her House. Half of her wanted to take up Lily's offer in order to pass Charms, while the other half of her wanted to take up Lily's offer in order to have a real live person to actually talk to. She thought enviously of how the others in her House seemed, well, if not completely thrilled, at least content with the social climate of Slytherin. They seemed to get along fine – nobody complained, nobody else seemed to have the same problems that she did.

And that was why, really, the idea of being tutored by Lily Evans was appealing. She didn't feel at home in Slytherin. Instead, she rather felt as if the House that she'd been sorted into had looked at her, scratched it's head a bit, and decided “Nah, you know what? The Hat made a mistake with this one.” There wasn't anyone that she could identify with, nobody that she felt comfortable talking to, nobody that seemed to have the same difficulty fitting in.

She would have to take up the Head Girl's offer, she eventually decided, or else face a slow but inevitable descent into insanity. That said, it would really be all the more comfortable for every involved party should the tutoring sessions remain a secret, or at least, not common knowledge.


	6. Hello, Goodbye

**Saturday, October 8, 1977**

Time flew at Hogwarts. This wasn’t news to any of the students, but with graduation, job hunting, and the real world looming, the fact that a month had already passed was enough to make Remus uneasy. Hogwarts was something of a bubble for him; as a werewolf, as a homosexual, the real world would not be as forgiving a place. He was terrified of what it entailed - memories of the abuse he’d read about, heard about, even witnessed first hand before arriving at the Scottish castle, sped through his mind whenever a classmate mentioned their plans after Hogwarts. And so it was that on a cold Friday night (or Saturday morning, depending on one’s perspective) in early October, Remus Lupin found himself utterly unable to sleep. His bedclothes were clammy and damp, and stuck uncomfortably to his body. He stood up, hands moving to the hem of his shirt to pull it off, but jumped back in surprise when he realized that he wasn’t alone, that there was a figure at the window, a cigarette glowing red between its fingers.

“Can’t sleep?” Sirius asked innocently.

“Merlin,” Remus gasped, “Sirius, what’re you doing?”

He shrugged. “Prongs says it doesn’t bother him, but he’s shite at lying, so I’ve gotta light up when I know he won’t be around. 3 AM’s one of those times that generally works pretty well. You?”

“I- Well. I-” Lupin sat back down. His heart was pounding, but that was normal around Sirius, wasn’t it? Why was he awake - oh, yes. In a rush, all of the images of angry mobs, pitchforks, and torches that Sirius’ face had banished came back. “I was just thinking about what’ll happen after Hogwarts.”

Sirius nodded sagely. “Ah, yes. Joining the workforce and all that. You know that you don’t have to, yeah? Prongs and my offer still stands.”

Remus shook his head. “Still not accepting, Sirius. ‘Best Friend Who Can Also Turn Into A Wolf Every Few Weeks’ is not a job title that I can be proud of.”

Sirius grinned and shrugged. “Whatever you say, mate.” He motioned to Lupin’s shirt. “You don’t have to keep that on on my account.”

“W-what?” Thank Merlin that Sirius wasn’t Padfoot right now. Actually, he wasn’t sure that one needed dog’s ears to hear the pounding of his heart. This was a dream he’d had more than once, wasn’t it?

“You stood up to take it off, right?” Sirius clarified after a moment, “You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before, you don’t have to keep the shirt on if it’s too warm. I mean, it’s frigid in here, but whatever. One of those wolf things, I guess.”

“N- No. No, I was standing up to stretch,” Remus lied, “I’m fine now.” The time of night and the cool air, and Sirius’ silhouette as he leaned against the window frame with the starry sky behind him was already pushing his concentration; there was no need to add to it by removing any clothing.

Sirius nodded slowly before taking a last drag on the cigarette. He ground the butt into the stone of the window frame and flicked it outside. “Uh-huh. Look, Moons, you sure you okay?”

“Come again?”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Oh come off it. Everyone can tell that something’s up. Hell, even Wormy’s noticed, and it took him a week to realize that he wasn’t actually allergic to showering and that I was just putting doxy powder in his pants. Anyway, Prongs figures you’re in love, but I told him you’re as sexual as a gargoyle.”

Remus’ head started to pound. “James said what now?” he asked, trying to keep the quiver out of his voice.

Sirius laughed. “Yeah, he figures you’re in love and he’s afraid it’s Evans. He asked me to make sure you’re not encroaching on his bird. So this is me checking to see if you’re encroaching on his bird.”

There was a beat before Remus could answer. “James can rest assured that I am not at all interested in Lily.”  
    “Good. What’s so funny?”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

Remus laughed for another few seconds before an angry voice broke through. “Look, I know I’m a heavy sleeper and all, but it is 3AM and I have things to do this weekend. Shut it and let a bloke sleep.”

Sirius chuckled. “Sorry Worms. We’ll keep it down. Wouldn’t want to mess with your big plans or nothing,” he said, before winking at Remus and flopping into his bed.

And even though nothing had been resolved, even though the threat of joining the Real World loomed (ten minutes closer, even) Remus suddenly felt a lot better.

* * *

“Alice, is the blanket fort really necessary? It’s like forty degrees in here.”

“Mary, I told you, this is a top-secret meeting.”

“Yeah, but can’t we just Silencio and Colloportus the door or something?”

Alice began to pout. “Julia, explain to her the importance of the Fort of Secrecy.”

“The Fort of Secrecy is specially designed to capture and reinforce creative brainwaves while keeping out intruders and keeping them from listening in, spying on, smelling, or otherwise detecting the conspirators within due to advanced Pillow technology.”

“Was that all one breath? And besides, I thought you hated enclosed areas.”

“This isn’t an enclosed area! This is the Fort of Secrecy.”

“I’m really not sure I see the differen-”

“Mary!” Alice cut in, her frustrated tone bordering on anger, “This is important!”

Mary let out a sigh. “Fine, Al, I’m paying attention. What’d you call this meeting for?”

Alice’s grin was ferocious. “I hereby call to order this emergency meeting of the team behind Operation: Jily!” (“Lames,” Julia remarked.) “Last time, brave work done by one of our agents in deep cover,” she gestured to Mary, who rolled her eyes, “Revealed that the target does not believe the sincerity of James’ affection! So on today’s agenda: gaining proof that James really and truly loves Lily, and getting our romantically-challenged Head Girl to realize it!”

Julia clapped, before saying, “I vote we follow him using Invisibility Cloaks!”

Mary frowned. “Julia, we don’t have any Invisibility Cloaks.”

“Oh. Right.” The tall girl thought for a second, before coming up with a solution. “We should have a fundraiser, then! We can have a bake-sale!”

“No, no,” Alice replied, “That’s no good. No one would buy anything from a bake-sale when we have house-elves.”

“We could free the house-elves?”

“Ooh, I was going to suggest learning Disillusionment Charms, but that’s much better.”

“Yes, I think so too. We’ll need a distraction, a giant sled, and eight hundred pairs of socks.”

“I think I know somebody who knits! And Hagrid should have a sled we can use!” Alice added enthusiastically.

“Ooh, good, then we just have to get the wool. What color d’you think, Mary?”

Things, Mary decided, were getting out of hand. “If we’re just trying to get proof that James fancies Lily, can’t we just, like, ask him? Or failing that, his friends? I can’t see them denying it or anything, the boy’s been pretty vocal about his crush for the last, oh, six years.”

Alice’s face fell. “But that’s no fun! And besides, they might lie!”

“He’s been saying he’s in love with Lils for years, we just need somebody to clarify that he was being honest, right? I’m telling you, Al, just asking one of his friends is the easiest way. And besides, learning a Disillusionment is definitely easier, and less far-reaching, than freeing all of the House-Elves. I quite like having food at meals.”

Alice thought for a second. “Yes, yes, I see your point. Research on the Disillusionment begins promptly!”

Mary groaned. “That wasn’t really my point. Julia, work with me here. You know it’d be easier to just talk to one of James’ friends.”

Julia nodded. “But it wouldn’t be as fun!”

Mary took a deep breath. Sometimes she wasn’t quite sure if she was going to school or babysitting. Now was one of those times. “Yeah, but won’t it be more fun to see James and Lily together sooner?”

Julia’s eyes widened. Mary had a point. She nodded.

“Julia!” Alice cried, distraught. “Not you too! Don’t you see the value of the plan? What if they lie? We have to know that they’re telling the truth for this to work.”

Weekend or not, there were piles of homework that needed to be done, and this was going nowhere. “Al, if that’s what you’re worried about, you can be the one to do the questioning, okay?”

The brunette thought about it for a minute, before frowning. “Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll talk to Sirius next time I see him.”

“Sirius? Why him in particular?”

“Because he’s James’ best mate!” A pause, and then: “Also, he’s the fittest.”

Mary scowled. No plan, the saying went, survived contact with the enemy, and Alice’s fondness for a pretty boy definitely counted. Ah, well. If you want something done, as the other saying went, you have to do it yourself.

* * *

Frank Longbottom was at a crossroads. On the one hand, Alice Fortescue was single and there was a Hogsmeade trip coming up and if he was reading his astronomy chart correctly, he would have good luck in dramatic endeavors for the next few days - everything seemed to be in place.

On the other hand, the thought of actually walking up to Alice and saying something like, “Hey Alice, I’ve fancied you for a while, would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me?” absolutely terrified him. So really, it was quite the quandary.

He rolled over in bed and bashed his head into his pillow, then once again for good measure.

“Are you agonizing over Alice again?” his fellow sixth year Hufflepuff Min-Seok Lee asked.

“No,” Frank groaned, lying through his teeth.

“Frank, please, for the love of Merlin, just ask her out.”

“Why do you care so much?” Frank asked miserably.

“Because if you don’t make a move soon, she’ll find another boy, and then I’ll have to put up with this pathetic display for the rest of my Hogwarts career, if not longer.”

“Another boy- What are you trying to say about Alice?” Frank asked, suddenly fiery.

“It’s just an observation!” Min-Seok said, hands raised defensively, “I mean, every time you got up the courage in the past, she found someone else, and I don’t want that to happen to you again, man. What have you got to lose?”

“My dignity,” Frank said.

Min-Seok rolled his eyes. “Trust me, that won’t be a problem.”

* * *

It wasn’t uncommon to find Lily Evans in the library on a Saturday morning. In fact, if you were to ask her friends, it was entirely possible that it happened all too frequently. Unusually, on this particular Saturday, Lily was not alone. The red-head watched with satisfaction as Melanie Greengrass screwed up her eyes, took a deep breath, and quietly whispered “ _accio quill._ ” The look of delight on the younger girl’s face as the feather zipped towards her was priceless.

“See?” Lily said, “It’s not that bad. You just have to be more deliberate with your wand-movement. Haphazard wand work is the most common mistake in Charms, but it’s also one of the easiest things to correct.” She glanced at her watch. “Right. You seem to have gotten the hang of Summoning, so I think we should spend some time on Banishing before we break for lunch. Does that sound okay?”

Melanie’s eyes were round and huge and darted between Lily and her wand.

“Melanie? Are you okay?”

The blonde girl just hugged Lily, fiercely wrapping her arms around the older girl’s waist. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Lily blinked. “It- It’s not a problem, Melanie.”

“Still,” the girl replied, “You’re helping me. You’re not supposed to be helping me.”

“Not supposed to- Why wouldn’t I help you?”

Melanie let go of Lily and stepped back, looking down at the ground. “You’re a Gryffindor and I’m a Slytherin. It’s how it works. We’re not even supposed to really talk to each other.”

Lily snorted. “Melanie, House doesn’t mean anything. One of-” She stopped abruptly. Severus wasn’t her best friend anymore, she couldn’t say that. “One of my oldest friends is in Slytherin. And I didn’t stop talking to him just because of that,” she finished, not untruthfully.

Melanie frowned. “Who?” she couldn’t help but ask. She hadn’t heard anything about the Head Girl being friends with one of her housemates besides Narcissa, but then, everyone had been friends with Narcissa.

There was a tightness to Lily’s face when she replied. “Can we talk about that some other day?” she asked. “We- we’re not really very close anymore. I mean, we stopped talking, but we didn’t stop talking just because he was a Slytherin. I-” She smiled weakly at Melanie and shook her head to clear her thoughts. “Sorry. We can talk about that some other day, but regardless of whether or not there’s precedent, I’m not going to stop teaching you just because of some stupid House rivalry.”

Melanie nodded, but she still looked guarded. Lily sighed. “But yes, I guess that the library might not be the best place to practice. We’ll stick it out for today and then spend next week looking for something a bit more private, okay?”

Melanie nodded, eyes shining. She picked up her wand and listened intently to Lily’s instructions.

The Banishing charm never stood a chance.

* * *

Remus groaned inwardly. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, he supposed, but there were times when Remus felt that not only did Sirius know, he deliberately teased. Take, for instance, lunch. He knew it was ridiculous, but he couldn’t help feeling like the victim the way Sirius was eating that damn steak. He let out an involuntary growl and licked his lips. He couldn’t help it. A crush on its own was hard enough, but a gay crush on his best friend that he bloody well lived with was torture. He was glad, so glad, that Lily knew now, that he had somebody to talk to, but his life wasn’t sunshine and daisies. Sleeping with the boy (and not in the way that he’d like, mind you) meant that there were certain other problems that he had no way of relieving. Of course, the wolf-blood wasn’t making anything any easier.

And so Remus growled again as he watched that beautiful boy eat his food knowing full well how ridiculous he was being but completely unable to stop. Honestly, how was it possible to eat a steak sexily?

His growling and lip-licking was rather abruptly brought to a halt when he realized that Peter was staring at him. “You okay, Moony?” the boy asked seriously. “Only there’s a whole plate of steaks right there so I’m not sure why you’re so intent on the one Padfoot’s eating.”

Remus flushed crimson but covered (very smoothly, he thought) by throwing his fork over his shoulder and dramatically dropping to the floor to look for it. Who said werewolves were all strength and no subtlety? No one, that’s who. Well, plenty of people did, but they were wrong.

After a few seconds of, in his opinion, rather convincing searching, and confident he could keep a straight face free of flush, Remus popped back up to the table, fork in hand. “Got it!” he crowed to a bemused Peter. He wiped the utensil off on his robes and politely excused himself from the table. He was barely outside of the Great Hall when his heart began to pound. He had been so close to being caught. If it had been anyone other than Peter... He shuddered. He’d have to be more careful in the future. Somehow.

He was deep in thought, plotting how best to mysteriously contrive to infect Sirius with a mild enough case of dragon pox such that the boy would have to miss several weeks of class (and by extension, several weeks of contact with Remus) when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He jumped, spun, and tried to whip his wand out, but succeeded only in yanking on a handful of his robes and collapsing to the floor.

“Er,” said the voice of Mary MacDonald, “I can come back, Remus, if this is a bad time or something.”

Relieved that he wasn’t under attack, Remus stood up and dusted off the front of his robes. “Nope!” he chirped. “Everything’s fine over here, Mary! Perfectly alright. Nothing strange going on at all.”

“You sure?” Mary asked, “I just wanted to ask you a couple of things about our illustrious Head Boy, but it’s not pressing or anything.” She looked Remus up and down, “I can come back if you’re having a moment.”

Remus shook his head vigorously. “No moment! Talking now is fine. Yes. Questions about James are fine.”

Mary looked suspicious, but didn’t press. The pair began to walk, looking for an empty classroom to house their discussion. As they moved further and further from the Great Hall (and more importantly, from Sirius Black) Remus began to calm down, gradually becoming more and more like himself. “So,” he eventually asked as they turned a corner on the second floor, “Why’re you coming to me?”

For the briefest of moments, Mary’s face tightened almost imperceptibly, but it returned to normal as she spoke. “It’s going to sound ridiculous, but bear with me. Alice and Julia have it in their heads that they’re going to play matchmaker for Lily and James-”

“What?” Remus squawked, “What do they think that Sirius, Peter, and I have been doing for the past five years?”

Mary shrugged. “Some things need a female touch. Any way, one of us girls had to go information-gathering, and I’m afraid Alice is going to spend her time flirting with Sirius instead of questioning him.”

Remus scowled, but managed to catch himself. “I see,” he said, “And what kind of information are you looking for about James?”

“Just confirmation that he actually fancies her. Something that we can use as evidence.”

“Evidence?” She might as well have said “We want to know about his love-child with Slughorn,” or else “Dumbledore and Grindlewald were totally shagging,” or “ _confundo_ ” for all he understood. “Why d’you need evidence that James fancies Lily?”

“I talked to Lily about it, actually. She doesn’t think that James was sincere; says that those dramatic proposals weren’t how people really act when they fancy someone. She thinks that you lot have just been making fun of her for six years. ”

Remus stared at her, trying to gauge how serious she was being.

“Don’t look at me like that!” Mary said indignantly, “I’m just the- the errand girl. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one doing anything for Operation: Pevans,” she said thoughtfully.

“Personally, Peter and I always thought that ‘Jily’ sounded better, but Sirius likes ‘Lames,’”  Remus offered, before continuing: “Evidence, then? Merlin, we really have been going about this the wrong way. I guess Peter and I ended up in the Hospital Wing last Easter for nothing, didn’t we?”

The memory made Mary grin - that had been an especially ludicrous proposal, even by James’ standards. “Take it from me, Remus, when you ask a girl out, don’t do it in front of the whole school.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry; that won’t be a problem for me. I’ll go poke around James’ room and see if I can’t find anything,” he offered. He had just the thing in mind, too, provided he could find it.

* * *

Yes, Tom supposed, he could have used Polyjuice Potion - that would have worked just as nicely, would have been more practical, even, if less pleasant on the tongue. However, it lacked that certain dramatic flair that peeling off a layer of skin did, and so it was that Tom Marvolo Riddle, having infiltrated the home of Harold Minchum, peeled off the face that had previously belonged to his butler. He did so with not a twinge of regret - the late Mr. Shillings (half-blood) had kept such good care of his skin; such a supple and fine disguise was hard to come by these days.

Mr. Minchum whipped out his wand, and without hesitation, flung a rather nasty electric blue curse at the intruder. With one hand, Tom lazily batted it to the side where it struck a lamp which promptly burst into brilliant violet flames, before chiding him with a gentle voice. “Tsk, tsk, Minister,” he said, “No need for so warm of a welcome. I came only to talk over a few matters with you, I mean you no harm.”

“No harm?” the Minister of Magic seethed, his eyes wide with anger, “You are the most wanted man in England. You have slaughtered dozens of innocents. You walked into my house, killed my butler, wore his skin, and you mean me no harm?” He punctuated her last word with a vicious slash of his wand.

Tom touched his cheek with two fingers, grinning when he pulled them back to see that they were slick with blood. “Lovely, Minister. Really, truly wonderful. It’s been a long time since someone has marked me, but really. I am just here to talk.” He snapped his fingers and the wooden planks beneath their feet writhed and twisted, until Minchum was bound tightly from neck to toe in thick vines. Tom chuckled as he walked over to her, plucking Minchum’s wand out of his grasp and moving it behind the Minister’s ear. “So let’s talk.”

It was a kindness, he thought, that he’d allowed the Minister enough slack to nod his head. Really, his reputation for cruelty was ill-deserved when it truly came down to it.

* * *

“Right,” Sirius snapped, throwing aside his copy of _Transfiguration for the Creative and Disturbed_ , “Wormy, what in the name of Merlin is so funny? I know it’s not the book you’re holding, because I’m pretty sure you can’t read, and you’re at the wrong angle to see your face in the mirror, so what’s up?”

From the other side of their room, Peter shook his head quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Padfoot. Nothing’s funny.”

James groaned. “Oh leave him alone, Pads. Don’t you have homework to do, or something?”

Sirius’ eyes widened. “Homework? Who are you and what have you done with James Potter?” He crossed to Remus’ bed where James was lying and began to shake his best friend by the shoulders. “Wormy! Run and find Moons - it’s an emergency! Somebody’s Imperius-ing Prongs!” His lower lip began to quiver.

To his credit, Peter didn’t actually leave the room. He did, however, jump up and run to the door before realizing that Sirius was joking.

“Ha ha,” James deadpanned, “Good one, mate. I know for a fact you have five feet for Charms that you could be doing instead of yelling at Peter for having fun.”

Sirius chuckled and dropped the other boy. “Ahhh, I’ll figure something out. Flitwick likes me.”

James just rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Just lay off of Wormy. It’s hard to think when you’re going on.”

“Hate to interrupt your lascivious thoughts about Evans.”

“Git.”

“Prat.”

The boys sat up and began to throw various bits and pieces from around the room at each other, summoning pillows, or spare quills, or shoes, to reload.

“Guys,” Peter interrupted mournfully as a rather smelly used sock flew past his ear, “Stop fighting.”

Sirius frowned. “Worms, we’re hardly fighting,” he said as he threw an open bottle of ink at James.

“Yeah,” James added, transfiguring the ink into water, “I’d barely even call this a tiff.”

Peter shook his head. “Still. I don’t like it when friends fight.”

The other two boys looked at each other and then shrugged. “Fair,” James said.

Peter brightened. “Good!” he chirped, before turning and rummaging around his bags. “I got cauldron cakes! D’you guys want some?”

James laughed. “Worms, have we ever said no to food?”

Peter grinned, before carefully inspecting them, and tossing a brightly wrapped pastry to his friends. He opened a third himself and took a big bite, watching Sirius intently as he did so.

Sirius finished his quickly and noisily, smacking his lips as he licked his fingers. “Cheers, Worms. Worms? What’s the matter - did I get cake on my face?” He began wiping at his cheeks and chin, searching for smears of chocolate.

Peter watched, disappointed, as Sirius rubbed his face. Sirius was many things, but at the moment, madly in love with Hortense Arrow was not one of them. Something was wrong. He looked back through the package of Cakes, but the one that he’d marked with a spot of frosting was definitely gone. Yes, something had clearly gone wrong. Peter scratched thoughtfully at his chin, at a loss as to what to do. He sat and thought for a few minutes, before a wonderful idea came to him, a jewel of clarity in the haze of his consciousness - he knew who could help.

“Padfoot, Prongs, I’ll be back in a bit.”

James looked up. “What’s that?”

“I’ve gotta go ask Hortense for help with something.”

“The Hufflepuff bird with the tooth thing?”

The only response was a dreamy sigh.

* * *

“Er, listen, Alice,” he said, “I’m sure you don’t know who I am, but-”

“You’re Frank Longbottom,” Alice said, “Of course I know who you are.”

“You- you do?” Frank asked, fantasies of a long-hidden crush bursting suddenly forth.

“Sure,” Alice said easily, “You’re the one that the boys turned into a leprechaun during fifth year, right?” She thought for a moment as Frank’s world crumbled around him. “I suppose it would have been your fourth year, though.”

“I- I should probably go,” Frank said, trying to disguise the distress that he felt at learning that the leprechaun incident was all Alice knew him by.

“Oh no, I’m sorry, you were going to say something,” Alice said, and the sincerity in her voice made Frank turn around, made him consider what he could be walking away from.

“I was- Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me next week?” he asked hopefully, “Like, as a date?”

“Okay, Frank, I’d like that,” Alice said with a smile.

“Really?”

Alice snorted. “Would I say so otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said, suddenly nervous, “I mean, sometimes I-”

The rest of his sentence was cut off as he tumbled down a flight of stairs, too distracted by Alice’s remark to pay attention to where his feet were.

“Merlin, are you okay?” Alice gasped as she descended the stairs in a somewhat more orderly fashion behind him.

“I think my leg is broken,” Frank admitted with a groan, “I’m sorry, this really isn’t my best look, I promise I’m usually more put together than this.”

Alice laughed weakly as she helped Frank stand, bracing herself to take the weight that his leg couldn’t. “I can’t believe you’re worried about that right now.”

“Maybe I read my star chart wrong,” Frank mused as the pair made their way to the Hospital Wing.

* * *

On the whole, Tom decided, his little meeting had gone rather well. Just as well as he’d planned for, although, he allowed, his expectations of the Minister had been so low that it would really have been something of a shock if they hadn’t. His tongue darted out of his mouth, licking a spot of blood off of his upper lip.

His plans could move along now - he’d given himself some two and a half months to get the Minister to see his side of things, but he’d folded after just three hours of chatting. So much for a hard-line approach to the Dark Arts. In retrospect, he was probably too used to dealing with the likes of Albus Dumbledore, he’d forgotten how easy it was to get his way with the rest of society. He shifted dates and battle-lines in his head; he could be ready to go by New Years, and wouldn’t that just be deliciously symbolic? Albus would appreciate that - he’d always had a flair for the dramatic. Tom smiled, until he remembered how many letters he would have to write now. He did so hate writing letters.

* * *

The common room in the Head’s apartment was quiet. Lily was alone, and even though she'd finished her work some time ago, she found herself staying up. The room was fairly small, and filled as it was with squishy couches and fat chairs, it was rather cozy, but that just magnified the feeling of being alone. The Head Girl sipped her tea (lemon with honey) and told herself that she was not waiting up for James Potter.

Of course, that was a lie and she knew it, but still, old habits died hard, and making fun of James Potter was one of those habits. She’d come to appreciate his company at night, though, when they’d both stay up doing homework, or chatting, or, on more than one occasion, eating dessert that James swore he had not nicked from the kitchens. It was strange, albeit nice, to see the leader of the Marauders in a more relaxed setting, and one that she had gotten used to.

Which, really, just made his absence that night all the stranger. She glanced at the clock - 23:47 - nearly two hours later than he usually got in. She sighed, and stood up, deciding that it was really getting ridiculous and that she ought to get some sleep when the door burst open, revealing a battered and bruised James Potter.

The sight of his face, cut up and bloodied, sent a sharp, unfamiliar pang through her chest that she would have to examine at some point, probably without the ‘help’ of Mary “Probing Questions” MacDonald, but right now, Potter was hurt.

She rushed to his side, pulling out her wand to stem the flow of blood from a particularly nasty gash on his forehead. “Merlin, Potter, what happened?” she asked, as she siphoned off some of the mess.

The boy swatted her hand away, grinning. “You should see the other guy.”

“Potter, this isn’t funny. You’re hurt. What happened?”

The grin was threatening to take over the boy’s entire face. “Au contraire, Evans. It’s hilarious.” He gestured at his face, before explaining, “This, my lovely Head Girl, is the result of one Peter Pettigrew, kept from true love by his dastardly, trouble-making friends.”

Shocked, she stopped cleaning. “Come again? Pettigrew hurt you?”

“Peter tried to sneak Sirius some love potion, but got the cakes mixed up. We had to keep him from jumping on some Hufflepuff sixth year and proposing using a metal bit he popped off his omnioculars, and I sustained a couple of injuries in the process.” He rubbed his jaw, before adding, “Somehow, that boy developed a mean right hook. S’like his hand is made of metal or something.”

“Never a boring moment with the Marauders, hmm?” She was relieved, partially that Potter was okay and partially because the strange pang had dulled to a level she was much more comfortable with ignoring.

“Guilty as charged.” He patted his face gingerly and examined his fingers. They were clean. “Thanks. Why’re you still up?”

“I was worried.”

He grinned. “What, about me? You shouldn’t have, Evans.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re Head Boy, I’m Head Girl, I figured if you were out and about this late, it might be trouble. I wasn’t totally wrong.”

“Ah, yes, well, as I’ve always said, Trouble is Peter’s middle name.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Right, okay, it’s ‘Polliver,’ but he doesn’t like having that spread much.”

She chuckled. “But everything’s sorted? The potion wore off? Did Sirius get as battered as you?”

James rolled his eyes. “As if. The git pulled a camera out of wherever and started taking pictures. Honestly, I’m the only true friend in the group.”

Lily grinned. “If I ask nicely, do you think he can get me a copy? We could frame it.”

James looked at her for a full second, trying to determine if she was joking or not. Eventually, he gave up and shook his head. “I’m off to bed,” he said, “It’s been a night.”

As Lily watched his retreating back, images of James, topless and towelling off, sprung forward and the pang in her chest returned with a vengeance. She groaned. This was a highly inconvenient development.


	7. All Together Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter update this time, though this is the last "set-up" chapter. I think I've set most of my ducks up in a row and I'm afraid I'm not sure what the rest of the metaphor is, but it's probably something about knocking them over. Quite excited for what's coming up!

**Sunday, October 30th, 1977**

The envelope was thick and creamy with “ _You’re invited!_ ” embossed across the top in blocky letters. If it weren’t for the telltale insignia in lieu of a return address, a skull with a serpent coiling out of its mouth and down the envelope like a grotesquely oversized tongue, it would be downright cheerful.

With shaking hands, Walburga Black slipped open the envelope, pulling out the card within. “ _Save the date!_ ” it read, in elegant hand that spread like emerald spiderwebs across the page. “ _January 1st, 1978. Black robe attire, invitations taken at the door. One admit per invitation._ ”  The joke was apparent and would almost be funny if the implication wasn’t so nefarious. Walburga’s hands tightened, crumpling the paper slightly. She would have to tell Regulus and he wouldn’t be pleased.

Across the country, Lucius Malfoy opened a similar envelope to find a similar letter. Excitement swirled with a newer emotion, a kind of worry. Their work could finally start - they could finally take their country back from those that had corrupted it, infected their magic and their very way of life. It was a cause that he would gladly give his life for, if it was his life to give, but it wasn’t, not anymore. There was Narcissa, and there was their unborn child. Speaking of-

“‘Cissa,” he called out, “A letter came in.”

“A letter?” Narcissa asked, walking into their room, “Who from?”

“It’s the Dark Lord. There’s a date.”

Narcissa looked at the invitation that Lucius held out. “Are you sure this isn’t Aunt Circe inviting us to her latest wedding?”

Lucius shook his head. “His sign is on the envelope.”

Narcissa clutched at her belly. It hadn’t yet grown much, but the action had become instinctual nonetheless. “It’s really happening,” she said quietly, then, with more strength, “I’ll stop writing to Lily. You’re right, Lucius, family is the most important thing.”

* * *

“You’re doing really well,” Lily said, grabbing the copy of _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2_ from out of the air.

“It gets easier with practice,” Melanie admitted, although she smiled happily at the compliment nonetheless, “And I have a great teacher.”

“Yeah, Flitwick is tops,” Lily said, holding the book up for Melanie to summon.

“ _Accio book_ ,” Melanie said, “And I mean it, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this if you weren’t helping me. I don’t know what I’m going to do next year.”

“Hey, don’t think like that. You’ll be fine, I promise. You just need to have a little confidence, I think.”

“If you say so,” Melanie said, letting out a long-suffering sigh.

“We’re definitely going to have to find somewhere else to do this, though. We can’t really do anything long range here, and _sonorus_ is definitely out,” Lily said. The two girls shivered at the thought of Madam Pince’s reaction to sound amplification charms in the library.

“I can look for something,” Melanie offered.

“I was just going to ask James,” Lily said, “If anyone would know where two people can practice magic without being seen, it’d be him.”

Melanie looked quizzically at Lily.

“What? They might have calmed down this year, but you know how they were,” she said defensively.

“No,” Melanie said, “It’s- You talk about the Head Boy a lot, but I think that this is the first time that you’ve called him James and not Potter.”

“What-” Lily spluttered, “I- That’s not true.”

“No, it definitely is,” Melanie said, “I mean, I remember thinking how strange it was that you called him by his last name.”

Lily’s face flamed. “You know, when I said that you needed to have a little confidence, I meant with your spellwork, not in making fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun!” Melanie insisted, “I just want to make sure you’re happy. It can be self-serving; I’m sure you’re a better teacher when you’re happy than when you’re brooding.”

“Careful, there. You’re starting to sound like a proper Hufflepuff,” Lily teased.

“And you’re starting sound like you’re trying to change the subject. I’m not going to tell anyone,” Melanie said, “And I wouldn’t, even if I actually talked to anyone who would be interested.”

Lily sighed. “I know, Mel. It’s just- falling for him would be really inconvenient. He made a big spectacle about asking me out for years, and I never thought he was serious.”

“Oh yeah, I remember what happened on his birthday last year.”

Lily groaned and put her head in her hands. “So you see why I can’t possibly like him.”

“I don’t know,” Melanie said dubiously, “You did say that he’s calmed down this year. You just need to have a little confidence, I think. I mean, maybe just give it a chance.”

“Give it a chance?”

“I’m not saying you should go ask him out right now!” Melanie said quickly, “I mean, maybe just don’t think of him as Potter, the boy who you have all of this history with, but as James, who might be fun to spend time with?”

“I can’t believe I’m taking advice about my love life from a second year,” Lily said.

Melanie shrugged. “Like I said, I think Care of Magical Creatures is really my calling.”

“Hey!”

* * *

A couple of hours later saw Alice Fortescue walking hand in hand to the Quidditch pitch with Frank Longbottom. Ravenclaw and Slytherin's game a few weeks prior had been a sixteen hour long disaster and there were many who would have come out to support Gryffindor or Hufflepuff but stayed inside for fear of a repeat incident. Alice had fretted that the Quidditch match would bring out the worst of the pair, that their house rivalry would overcome their affection for each other, but Frank had diplomatically offered to wear red if it would appease her.

The pair settled in to the stands, Frank's Gryffindor scarf drawing strange looks from their neighbours. His attention wasn't on the crimson spectators around him though; it was fixed entirely on the girl sitting to his left. The Quidditch match was their first date. Frank’s leg hadn’t healed in time for Hogsmeade weekend and the backlog of work that had built up meant that the weekend after hadn’t worked either.

Frank squeezed Alice’s hand, exulting in the feeling of her skin on his as the pair waited for the match to begin.

The whistle blew and the pitch was covered in streaks of red and yellow as both teams took their positions. James grabbed the Quaffle first and made a neat pass to Cassandra Plane only to hear Madame Ping's whistle blow again. Confused, he whipped his head around only to see the Hufflepuff seeker holding the Snitch aloft, the tiny golden ball shining from her hand.

James wasn't quite sure how to respond. On the one hand, his team had just lost, spectacularly so, an even one hundred and fifty points to zero, but on the other hand, he was fairly sure that he had just been part of a school-record breaking game. He dismounted his broom and shook the Hufflepuff seeker's hand. “Merlin. Next time give us a chance to toss the Quaffle around a bit. We'll never be able to show off for the scouts if you're ending the match before it begins.”

She laughed happily. “I got lucky. But thank you.”

James nodded quickly and headed to the showers completely disregarding the fact that he hadn't even been able to warm up much less work up a sweat during the seventeen or so seconds that he was in the air.

After he'd changed back into his school robes, James and the rest of his team dejectedly left the stadium to head back to the castle, and to homework, and to the rest of Gryffindor House who would surely be more than a little disappointed with the result of the game. He'd just made it out the gate when he heard a familiar voice ask, “What's going on? Did the match get cancelled?”

“Lily?” he asked, spinning to face the source of the voice.

“The one and only,” she affirmed. “What happened? I thought the match started at noon; it's only five past.”

The entire team minus James grumbled a few words of malcontent and continued towards the castle. It was a few seconds before James could respond, and even then, all he managed was, “What are you doing here? You never come to Quidditch matches.”

“That's not true! I came to one first year to see what it was all about.”

“And?”

“And then I decided that it was boring watching people flying around throwing and chasing after balls that were too small for me to see.”

James winced, the attack on his favorite sport coming from his favorite person like a physical blow. “Right, so what are you doing here now?”

“You asked me to come watch you play today. I think it was a couple of weeks ago while we were working on that essay for McGonagall on flame transfiguration?”

“I thought 'I'll think about it' was polite code for 'no,'” James admitted.

Lily rolled her eyes. “'I'll think about it' is code for 'I'll think about it,'” she said. “And in this case, it happens also to have meant, 'of course I'll come watch you play, James, thanks for the invitation.' At which point I have to ask, what happened? Why's your team headed off to the castle?”

He groaned. “We lost. Match is over.”

“The match is over?”

“How many times do you want me to repeat it?”

“No, no, I get it, I just- it must've lasted for all of two minutes,” Lily said.

“Less.”

“How is that possible?”

“The 'Puff seeker caught the Snitch.”

Lily frowned. “There isn't a time limit or something? There's no way the game's length is determined entirely by that one little ball.”

“Didn't you watch one of these before?”

“Yeah, but I left after fifteen minutes because I had Charms to do and because it was so boring. I refuse to believe that the game is entirely dependent on the Snitch. Football’s a much better game; it’s got sensible time limits and everything.”

James squinted a bit as he tried to remember. “Is that the muggle sport? I think Peter mentioned it once, but we all got bored when he mentioned that some games go by without anyone scoring.”

“Boring?” Lily asked, scandalized, “Football’s the universal sport. Everyone loves it.”

“What, a game where you have to run around and can’t even use your hands? And talk about a boring name; Muggles have no creativity.”

They continued to debate the relative virtues of Quidditch and football all the way to the castle where they were interrupted by Sirius and a very flustered Remus. Lily paused mid-analysis of how broomsticks added a financial aspect to the sport to wink at the blonde and laugh when his face flamed crimson. “Well, I'll leave you to your mates then, James,” she said, waving genially at the trio. “See you tonight?”

“Yeah,” James replied, “See you then.”

She'd barely made it twenty feet before Sirius leaned in. “So, what're the two of you doing tonight, Prongsy? Did she finally cave? Are you holding out on us?”

James groaned. “We're doing homework, Padfoot. We have that diagram for Slughorn on the uses of different parts of the white pine, remember?”

Sirius nodded dutifully and tapped one finger against the side of his nose. “Homework. Yup. Don't worry, Prongs, mums the word.”

Remus finally piped up. “Speaking of mums, Prongs, mine is visiting her folks for the hols and she wanted to make sure we’re still good to stay at yours.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “I suggested that we could all just go to his place _anyway_ because we’re all responsible consenting nearly adults and we can take care of ourselves, but Moons is pretty against that for whatever reason.”

“Yes, sue me for not wanting a repeat of third year,” Remus said drily, “I’m not sure Mrs. Yao’s cat has recovered.”

“Mine is out for, well, obvious reasons,” Sirius continued as casually as he could.

“I don’t think my place is big enough,” Peter admitted.

“Well, I haven’t heard otherwise from my parents, so it should be okay,” James said.

Sirius whooped.

“Well now that’s settled,” Remus said, “I’ve got to go track down Mary MacDonald - I’ll see you all at dinner.”

As he walked away, a sudden thought came to James.

“Is that her, do you think?” he asked Sirius and Peter, “Is it Mary that he fancies?”

“I’m still not convinced Remus has feelings of the sort for anyone,” Sirius said, “He just doesn’t strike me as the type.”

Peter laughed. “You just can’t recognize the signs because you’ve never really fancied someone. James and I, we-”

“Wait, when you say ‘we,’ are you counting your attempted fling with Hortense?” Sirius cut in with a taunting grin.

“I- She- No-” Peter sputtered.

“You are!” Sirius said gleefully, “Worms, I regret to inform you that potion-induced affection does not count.”

“I’m not talking about Hortense,” Peter snapped, “But either way, it’s obvious to everyone except for you that Moony is pining after some skirt.”

“And so what if he is?” Sirius challenged, “What are we supposed to do? Help him win her over? We’ve been helping Prongs for years and look where that’s gotten him.”

“Hey,” James objected, “She came to the match today.”

“Yeah, and then you blew it by getting blown out in the worst match of Quidditch ever,” Sirius said drily. “Point is, a) Moony isn’t, heh, mooning over anyone, and b) even if he was, if he wanted us to know about it, he’d say something. It’s none of our business otherwise,” he finished, leveling a sharp glare at James.

As much as James hated to admit it, Sirius had a point - as long as Remus wasn’t trying to win Lily’s affections under his nose, it really wasn’t his business who he was thirsting after. So James would grant Sirius point b. He would not, however, grant point a, because it was patently obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes and a functioning emotional response system that Remus was definitely thirsting.

His thoughts were interrupted by a commotion from down by the pitch. The boys looked down the way to see what they could make out, but whatever it was, it was blocked by a small group of people who seemed to be looking at something on the ground.

“Hey,” James said, catching the arm of a third-year Hufflepuff who was sprinting by, “What’s going on down there?”

“Frank Longbottom slipped in a puddle and knocked his head on the ground,” the boy explained, winded from running, “They sent me to go find Madam Pomfrey.”

“A puddle?” Peter said, confused, “But it hasn’t rained for a week.”

“Yeah, weird, innit,” the boy said, “Look, I’ve really got to run.”

James let him go and the trio watched as he sprinted off. “Poor Frank,” Sirius said, “Had a rough time of it today, didn’t he?”

“What do you mean?” James asked.

“Well, he finally got on a date with Alice Fortescue after he broke his leg asking her out a couple of weeks ago, and then the game lasts five seconds and he gets injured again.”

Peter nodded in commiseration.

“Hold on - he was on a date with Fortescue?”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Honestly, Prongs, where’s your head been? He’s been after her for ages.”

“What, so now you’re an expert on who’s lolling after who?”

“Whom,” Peter said.

“Shut up,” Sirius said, “And yeah, I reckon I am.”

“Shouldn’t we get down there and see if Frank needs help?” Peter said, unfazed by Sirius’ dismissal of his contribution to their conversation, “I mean, we’re no Pomfrey, but I think we’ve probably got the most experience with knocks on the head and all out of anyone else at Hogwarts.”

Sirius and James agreed, and the trio headed off to see what help they could offer.

* * *

Remus, meanwhile, had tracked down Mary MacDonald who had taken advantage of the unseasonably nice weather to catch up on some reading outside. He settled into the grass next to her and began to report on his search for proof of James’ affections.

“James Potter wrote sappy poetry?” Mary asked incredulously.

“Oh, yeah. And Merlin, it was awful. So bad. The worst. A real affront to the English language.”

“I can imagine,” Mary said with a laugh.

“No, no you can’t.” Remus shivered. “He tried to rhyme ‘pulchritudinous visage’ with ‘wreck dudes in Quidditch.’”

“That- Merlin, that’s an affront to society. He should be tried in front of the whole Wizengamot.”

“That wasn’t even the worst of it,” Remus said, shaking his head sadly. “I mean, okay, some of it was almost decent, but- Anyway, James was inordinately proud of what he wrote so even if he never actually sent any to Lily, it’d be unlike him to actually throw it out. He’s a bit of a hoarder.”

“Excellent, I can’t wait to read it.”

Remus winced. “Actually, I’m sorry to disappoint, but despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find it. I’m sure he still has it, it’s just better hidden.”

“That’s alright, thanks anyway for trying. And, I guess, for letting me know that our Head Boy massacres the English language in his free time.”

Remus laughed. “I’ll keep an eye out, but I won’t make any promises.”

“That’s fine, it was kind of a long shot anyway.”

“What’s the next phase in Operation: Pevans, then?”

Mary shrugged. “I’ll talk it over with the girls and we’ll figure something out. Drastic measures may be called for; the year is slipping by.”

“Well, if there’s anything that I or the other boys can do, please let us know. Seeing the whole business resolve itself one way or another will be a relief.”

“Tell me about it.”

He looked at the book that she’d laid aside. There was the head of a wolf on the cover, whose right side faded into a mountainous landscape. He didn’t recognize the author nor the title.

“Is this for Muggle Studies?”

Mary shook her head. “No, some of us read for pleasure, Remus.”

Remus smiled. “A girl after my own heart.”

“I rather doubt that, but if you want a look, you’re welcome to it. I’ve got the first in the series here.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a well worn book; its cover depicted a man in a suit and three children, on a cliff looking out over water with three standing stones behind them.

“Cheers,” Remus said, taking the book from her and settling down to read. The book was surprisingly engaging; the magic in it didn’t look like anything that he recognized, but then, if a muggle had managed to describe magic entirely, it would likely have caused a crisis for the International Statue of Secrecy.

Remus and Mary read together for the rest of the day in comfortable silence, all too aware that there wouldn’t be many more lazy weekends at Hogwarts like this.


	8. Nowhere Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, sorry about the late update. It shouldn't happen again.

**Saturday, November 12th, 1977**

When Mary had woken late and made her way to the Great Hall for a breakfast that should more accurately have just been called lunch, she had done so in the pursuit of a relaxing morning, the kind which preceded a relaxing day. She found her usual seat and piled her plate with eggs and toast, and poured herself a tall glass of pumpkin juice.

She had been sitting for only a few minutes when Lily slid into the bench next to her. “Hi!” she said cheerily, “How’s everything going?”

“Prr- goo-” Mary swallowed the bite of food she had, “Pretty good. What’s up?”

“Oh, you know, just enjoying the day.” It might have been convincing, had the wide grin stretched across Lily’s face been just a touch less artificial. Something, Mary knew, was up. She spent a second or two in silent debate as to whether or not she could, in good faith, ignore her suspicions and take Lily’s cheer at face value.

She could not, and so it was with a slightly heavier heart that Mary asked, “Okay, what’s really going on?”

Lily’s face fell. “Am I that obvious?”

Mary shrugged. “After six years, I like to think I’ve picked up on some of your cues. What’s up?”

“Are you going home for the winter hols?” Lily asked, pulling a stack of pancakes onto her plate.

“I’m not going to Slughorn’s holiday party with you,” Mary said flatly.

“Why not?”

“It sounds awful.”

“I thought we were friends!” Lily cried, dropping her fork onto her plate with a clatter.

“We are,” Mary said, “But we’re like, ‘I’ll help you move and plan your wedding’ friends, not ‘I’ll subject myself to a Slughorn party’ friends.”

“It’s free food!” Lily said, her desperation clear in the rise of her voice “And the company is- I mean, it’s not the worst. I’ll be there?”

“All of the food at Hogwarts is free. I’m eating free toast and free eggs right now,” Mary said, piling a few slices of free bacon on top of her meal. “I’m not going.”

“Please, Mary?” Lily begged, abandoning the pretense of the party being even slightly enjoyable, “I never know anyone there and it’s awful.”

“Why do you even go to them if you hate them so much?” Mary asked.

“I don’t know,” Lily said, the realization that Mary would not be able to be convinced making her grumpy, “I keep telling myself that I won’t go to another, but then Horace invites me and it’s so hard to let him down.”

“Really?” If the tone of her voice wasn’t indication enough, Mary raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

“I know he’s a little-”

“Pretentious?”

“Well, I was going to say particular, but yes. He’s still a good teacher! And he’s always been so supportive of me. He was the first teacher to make me feel like my being at Hogwarts wasn’t a mistake, you know? Like I actually might be magic after all.”

Mary sighed. “Well, I have to admit, this is a really convincing story.”

“So you’ll come?” Lily asked, her voice suddenly alight with hope.

“Absolutely not. I’m sympathetic, not masochistic.”

“Some friend you are,” Lily said, “When I have to move out of my parents’ house, I’ll be holding you to that offer.”

Mary nodded. “And when you’re getting married too, as long as Slughorn isn’t in charge of the reception.”

Lily shook her head sadly, but turned the conversation to the transfiguration essay that they’d been set, and with the onerous invitation declined, the rest of Mary’s morning proved to be as relaxing as she’d hoped.

That relaxation, however, proved to be short lived. It’s been said that no plan survives contact with the enemy and just so, Mary had found that no relaxation survives contact with Alice Fortescue.

“Order! Order!” Alice cried out, tapping her wand against the tiles that she sat on, “I will have order in this meeting!”

“Al, none of us are speaking,” Mary said, eyeing the edge with discomfort, “Are you sure that can’t have this meeting in our room?”

“We can’t risk the targets overhearing us,” Julia said.

“What are you talking about? Lily hasn’t been to the room in ages, and boys can’t get in. And even if we can’t meet in the room, did it have to be the roof?”

The three girls had, by Alice’s example, hopped out of the Gryffindor common room window which overlooked the roof of Hogwarts. It had then been a minute or two of walking, bent low with hands outstretched, until they’d found a section of room which was visible to no windows. A quick _scourgify_ then wiped off most of the grime which had accumulated over the past generations, and the meeting was able to begin.

“I’m just saying,” Mary continued, “We could have found an empty classroom, or walked to the Quidditch pitch, or sat by the lake, or basically anything else.”

“The Quidditch pitch is too cold,” Alice said, frowning.

“It’s colder up here!” Mary wailed.

“You called the meeting!”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to hold it on the roof,” Mary said sulkily, “I don’t like heights.”

“It’s totally safe!” Alice said indignantly, “The edge is like ten meters away. Just don’t look!”

Mary shuddered, but her estimation of Alice’s stubbornness outweighed her dislike for the untethered, swooping feeling in her belly, and she declined to press the issue.

“Why did you call this meeting?” Julia asked, “Did you find evidence that we can show Lily?”

Mary shook her head, trying her best to keep her breathing as even as possible. “No, I asked Remus, but he couldn’t find what we needed. Alice, did you get anything from Sirius?”

“I was going to talk to him, but then Frank had to go to the Hospital Wing, and I went with him.”

Unsurprised, Mary pressed on. “Well, I was doing some thinking, and I’m not even sure that it would have mattered if we’d found something.”

“What do you mean?” Alice cried out, “The reveal of a love long underestimated – it’s so romantic!”

Mary shook her head. “Even if she’d known that he meant it, Lily isn’t the kind to be blown away by James’ gestures.”

Alice furrowed her brow. As a lover of grand gestures herself, the idea that someone would not be vulnerable to one seemed incredibly foreign.

“What do you think we should do?” Julia asked as Alice pondered the truth of Mary’s statement.

“Well, I think that they’re actually getting along okay right now. James turned over this new, non-disruptive leaf, and Lily’s stopped jumping down his throat about everything. I think they just need an excuse to see each other in this new light, without all of the baggage of the last few years.”

“Ooh, so you think we should memory charm them!” Julia said, her eyes shining.

“No!” Mary said, horrified, “That would be terrible!”

“We could do temporary ones? I think that I read about those once.”

“Or we could charm them into disguises,” Alice said, suddenly invested in the conversation once more, “We could charm them to look like other people, and then have them meet somewhere, and then once they’d fallen in love, we could lift the spells!”

“That- I mean, that sounds like a book that I once read,” Mary said, “But no, that’s not what I was thinking at all. I meant that I think they need to spend time together in an unfamiliar environment, you know, one that isn’t classwork, or their rooms, or meals.”

“Ah,” Alice said, nodding knowingly, “So we’re going to lock them in a broom closet together. Classic. I like it.”

Mary’s eyes widened. “How do you come up with these things? I want to get Lily to have a boyfriend, not mental trauma, or three friends in prison.”

“Well, what’s your idea then?” Alice asked.

Mary shifted in her seat, her unease with the height completely forgotten in the excitement of her idea. “Lily complains every year about Slughorn’s holiday party, right? About how she never knows anyone at them?”

“She dragged me along third year,” Alice said, shivering at the memory, “I won’t ever make that mistake again.”

“Well, what if she did know someone there? What if James was there? They’d spend time with each other basically by default, right? And the holiday party is a totally different atmosphere – they won’t be Potter and Evans, two people with a history, they’d just be Lily and James.”

Alice chewed her lip as she thought it over. “Why would James be at the party?” she asked eventually, “Slughorn doesn’t invite just anybody.”

Mary shrugged. “Well, he is Head Boy, and as much as it’s wasted on shenanigans, he’s dead talented. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard of a sell.”

“And once he’s invited, we can tell him Lily’s there and he’ll be sure to go!”

“I think it would be best if he did not know that beforehand,” Julia said, “He is different when he knows that Lily is around.”

Mary nodded “That’s true, but we can’t rely on James agreeing to go to the party just because he feels like it.”

“I can write Mr. and Mrs. Potter,” Julia said, “I’m sure they can convince him to attend.”

“That’s a good idea. They seem pretty invested in this.”

Julia nodded. “I have to go,” she said, “I have somewhere to be soon, and if I have to owl Mr. and Mrs. Potter, I should leave now.”

“Okay,” Mary and Alice said, unperturbed by Julia’s sudden departure.

Julia made her way down from the roof and back to her room, where she quickly located a quill and parchment.

“ _Mr. and Mrs. Potter_ ,” she wrote, “ _Alice and Mary and I are working on what you asked me at dinner. We would like to know if you could please write James and tell him that he should go to Professor Slughorn’s holiday party. It is part of a plan that Mary told us on the roof._ ”

She signed the letter and blew on it gently a few times to help it dry. She checked her pocket watch – she would have to rush to get the letter sent before heading to the kitchens.

* * *

Melanie Greengrass wasn’t sure what she was looking for, really, but this was Hogwarts. Secret passages, unplotted rooms, and trick staircases abounded, so there must be somewhere that she and Lily could use to continue their weekly meetings, somewhere out of sight of wandering Slytherins, somewhere more suited to spell-work than the library.

Although they wouldn’t meet again until the next term, what with homework and exams encroaching on their free periods, Melanie felt a powerful urge to look for a new meeting spot for her and Lily. With the Head Girl’s help, she no longer felt utterly lost in charms class, and now that she’d tasted what success at the subject could feel like, she was almost desperate to hold onto it.

And so her weekend found her roaming the castle, looking for somewhere that a flustered second year and an infinitely patient Head Girl could practice the noisier, more disruptive charms that Madam Pince would never allow in the library.

It was on the seventh floor, just across a rather ugly tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy meeting his untimely, but probably well-deserved death at the hands of a group of unhappy trolls, that it happened. She had paced the corridor three times, lost in thought, when she saw a door that had not been there before.

She slowly pushed the door open; one couldn’t be too cautious at Hogwarts. What she saw nearly took her breath away.

The room was perfect, exactly what she had been looking for. It was spacious, with wide, bare floors and high ceilings that lent the room an openness without feeling cavernous. Despite the hallway that she had entered from being near the center of the castle, there were multiple windows which let in a generous amount of sunlight. A bookshelf along the wall to her right held a number of books, ranging from _The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 1_ through _Charming Your N.E.W.T Instructor_.

It almost felt too good to be true. “ _Accio book_ ,” Melanie said, pointing her wand at the bookshelf. _The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 2_ flew right to her outstretched hand.

She walked to the bookshelf to replace the volume. She ran her hand against the neatly aligned spines, their weight and solidity arguments against some strange illusion that she’d somehow wandered into. It was perfect and suddenly, January seemed so very far away.

* * *

“Reg?” Julia asked uncertainly of the figure sitting before the fire. “Are you okay?”

He turned to her and his face looked older than his fifteen years should have. His cheeks were grimy but for shiny trails leading from his eyes to his chin and his hair was limp. It was clear that he hadn’t showered in days; his robes were dirty and stained and underneath the warm, baked bread smell of the kitchens, she could smell the sour smell of his body. He was angry, very angry. “Do I look okay?” he snapped, “Voldemort owled my mother. He wants a representative from every major pureblood family to ‘stand with him’ when he rises.”

Julia cocked her head to the left and looked at him. He wilted under her gaze, shoulders falling forward with his head and he began to sob into her shoulder. “I’m so tired,” he managed, “So tired of being stuck in the middle of- of mother and Sirius and him.”

She rubbed his back and tried to soothe him as best she could. After he’d calmed enough to hold himself straight (as befits the scion of the Moste Noble House of Black) she asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I’ve been thinking about this ever since I got the letter and I can’t come up with any way to please everybody. Either I defect and leave mother to deal with Voldemort and probably live on the run with my brother or I join up and actively help a terrorist destroy everything that I care about.” He laughed shakily. “It’s kind of a lose-lose situation.”

Julia thought for a few seconds. “There’s another way,” she said eventually, “I don’t think it’s a lose, but I don’t know if it’s a win.”

“At this point, I’ll take anything better than what I’ve got.”

“You could,” she licked her suddenly dry lips, “You could pretend to join him. And then not really. And work against him while he thinks you’re his.”

Regulus looked at her for a full minute trying to gauge the sincerity of her idea before shaking his head. “It’s- Maybe if I was an Occlumens, but I wouldn’t be able to hide that kind of betrayal from him, not for as long as it would take.” His gaze softened. “But, but maybe, maybe if I can learn, I can-”

Julia looked at him uncomprehendingly. “Why did you stop talking?”

A weak laugh forced itself from his throat. “It takes years to become an Occlumens, Julia,” he reminded her, “And I’m looking at a time frame of six months max. I- There’s no way I could learn it in time.”

The pair fell silent then, until: “You could try to become an animagus?” Julia ventured.

“What good would that possibly do?”

“I read in a book that you can’t perform Legilimency on animagi when they’re in animagus form, and-”

“What, and you think I can just pop over and turn into- into a crow or something every time Voldemort wants to know what I’m thinking?”

“No, I-”

Regulus’ voice rose dangerously and his eyes flashed with anger and desperation. “Merlin, Julia, I’m trying to figure out how to get my family through the next couple of years alive and you’re giving me this rubbish?”

Julia shrank. “I was just trying to help,” she said, her voice small.

“Yeah? Well try harder! Because ‘Maybe you can become an ani-bloody-magus’ isn’t doing me any bloody good!”

Regulus’ magic lashed out as he did, a bright flash of red splitting the table that the two sat at in half. Julia leapt back, her eyes wide with fear, as their tea things clattered to the floor.

“I’m- I’m sorry,” Regulus said, “I didn’t mean to.”

Julia nodded meekly, but did not speak. She had backed away from the center of the room where broken remnants of a tea service lay; she sat with her back against the stone wall of the kitchen. Her hands, clutched together, were pressed against her chest, and she had shrunk into herself.

“I’m sorry,” Regulus said again, “I- I just make everything worse, don’t I? Merlin, I’m-” he shook his head ruefully. He slowly, gently, made his way to the wall where Julia sat, huddled, and sank down onto the floor beside her. “I’m sorry for blowing up. None of this is your fault.”

“I know,” Julia said quietly.

“I’m sorry I’m a bit rank. It’s been a rough couple of weeks.”

Julia nodded and relaxed slightly. She leaned into Regulus, who laid his head onto Julia’s shoulder. The pair sat for in silence for some time that way, and surrounded as they were by the hustle and bustle of the kitchen, it was almost as if the outside world didn’t exist at all.

* * *

Mary wasn’t certain how she’d ended up being the one to talk to Slughorn. Operation: Pevans had been Alice and Julia’s brainchild, but as things progressed, it felt like she was the only one actually doing anything for it, which was odd, given how excited Alice and Julia seemed about it, and how unenthused Mary had been at the onset.

At the beginning of the year, she’d found the idea of secretly matchmaking their friend to be invasive and, frankly, rude – Lily had turned James down enough times that her response to being set up with him should have been obvious. Mary had justified the enterprise with the knowledge that the ill intent would be offset by a total lack of effectiveness. However, as the year progressed, the idea that Lily could never be happy with James became less and less of a foregone conclusion, and Mary’s conviction that the right course of action was letting Alice and Julia expend a lot of energy to do very little wavered.

Which somehow brought her to Slughorn’s office, hand poised to knock at the door. She took a deep breath, trying to ready herself for the man’s bombastic conversation style, before rapping sharply three times.

The door swung open to reveal the potions master, a glass of amber liquid in one hand, and a cane which was surely for show in the other. “Hello?” he said, “What can I do for you, Ms.-”

“Mary MacDonald,” Mary supplied, “Gryffindor. You’ve taught me potions for seven years, now.”

“Yes, yes!” Slughorn cried genially, “I remember you. You put together an excellent Pepperup Potion last year. Wonderful.”

Surprised that he had remembered her singular moment of potions triumph, Mary smiled despite herself. “Yes, sir, that’s me.”

“Well, Ms. MacDonald, what can I do for you?” Slughorn asked, “Please, come in, come in.” He ushered her into his office, where she took a seat in the plush armchair across from his desk.

“Well, sir,” Mary said, declining the crystallized pineapple that Slughorn offered her, “It’s about your holiday party, actually.”

“Ah! That little get-together. You’ll want an invitation? Of course, m’dear! Plenty of food and drink for another!”

For some reason, the invitation didn’t sound as terrible coming from the source, and Mary could see what Lily meant when she said that she couldn’t turn the man down. She was a woman on a mission, though, so she stuck to her guns. “It’s- well, it’s kind of you to offer, sir, but I have other plans for that evening. It’s my friend, James Potter, the Head Boy? I overheard him talking about the party, he was devastated that he hadn’t received an invitation.”

“Did he?” Slughorn said, a tone of confusion in his voice, “How interesting.”

“Interesting, sir?”

“I’ve invited him to many a gathering over the years, but he’s never showed up,” Slughorn said sadly.

Mary thought quickly. “I- you can’t tell anyone, sir,” she said.

“Of course not,” Slughorn said. He leaned in, his eyes alight with excitement.

“Well, I think that James’ sudden interest has, if you’ll pardon my frankness, less to do with the gathering, and more to do with a specific attendee.”

“Oh?”

Mary nodded, hoping that the party would go well enough that Lily and James could forgive her for her interference; including Slughorn felt like taking their meddling to a new level. “It’s Lily Evans, actually. He quite fancies her and was hoping to impress her with his dress robes.”

Slughorn’s delighted laughter filled the small office. “How wonderful!” he cried, “Of course, of course. I should have known – my mustache stayed purple for weeks after the Fiasco of 1975. I’ll send him an invitation as soon as I can.”

“Er,” Mary said, mentally counting how long it would take for Julia’s owl to reach the Potters and how long their return message would take, “Could you give us a week or so?”

Slughorn nodded amicably. “I’ll set a reminder for myself now,” he said, waving his wand. “Now, are you sure you can’t attend? It’s a rare person who will take it upon herself to look after her friends as you are, and we’d love to have you.”

The second invitation was more tempting than the first, but the knowledge that the plan required that Lily know only James kept her strong. “I do appreciate the offer,” she said, “But I really do have to decline this time.”

“This time!” Slughorn said delightedly, “Well, Ms. MacDonald, I wish you a fine ending to the term, and hope that you join us in the future.”

He pressed a piece of pineapple into her hands as she left, which she nibbled on as she returned to her room, exhausted by what was meant to be a relaxing day. It was better than she'd expected.


End file.
